Birdblog

Another Mini Ice Age?

2012-01-30T06:25:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Another mini-Ice Age?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming--Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html

Maybe we need some Global Warming.

Thanks Duke!

IPCC Gag Order on Reviewers

2012-01-30T05:23:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Steve McIntyre reports a gag order from the IPCC on material destined for it's reports.

From a letter to McIntyre, posted at Climate Audit:

http://climateaudit.org/2012/01/26/another-ipcc-demand-for-secrecy/

"In a recent thread on the blog that you host, Climate Audit, you quote text and a figure directly from the WGI AR5 First Order Draft. We would remind you that each page of this document is clearly marked “Do not cite, quote or distribute”. Therefore, we kindly request you to remove this text and figure from your blog and refrain from such actions, which do not respect the terms of the IPCC review process.

[...]

As mentioned in our email to you of 16 December 2011, in order to have access to the Chapters and to submit review comments for consideration by the authors, all prospective expert reviewers of the WGI AR5 FOD are required to agree to the terms of the review, which specify that all materials provided for the review, including the chapter drafts, are considered confidential and shall not be cited, quoted or distributed. This is the standard IPCC practice in the preparation of its reports."

End excerpts.

What are they so afraid of? Isn't science about getting as many minds working on an issue as possible? Why should this be restricted to the chosen few?

Readers of THIS website know the anser; this isn't about science and never has been. It is a way to manage science, to get it to say what the statists and internationalists at the United Nations want it to say. The process MUST be closed, because if it is open too many people will be likely to spot the tricks employed to manipulate the science. The IPCC is about public policy, and to get the public to go along with it's policy recommendations the "science" must be presented as irrefutable, unchallenged, and must be withheld from those who are likely do find faults. It must be presented as a fait-accompli. Come out loudly as "science says" and make it impossible for critics to refute, because the critics haven't seen what was done. Then the public will believe that "the science is settled" and public policy can be made, policy that redistributes wealth, that manages the decline of the industrial civilization, that gathers more power into governments and international organizations.

The whole IPCC research process is a sham; it was never intended to get to the truth, but rather to message the truth, to lie in a convincing manner. Many scientists who thought they were actually there to get to the bottom of things found their portions edited out of the IPCC reports, while environmental activists and grad students wrote large swaths of the reports. The secrecy of the IPCC should be the tip-off; science kept secret - at least science done about something with far-reaching public policy influence - is not science at all. The only reason to keep it secret is to make it say what you wish.

Go to Climate Audit and read the entire letter to McIntyre - and his excellent reply.

The Illusion that Climate Policy is Environmental Policy

2012-01-30T05:00:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

This was the quote of the week from the SEPP newsletter:

"...we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy...One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore..."

IPCC co-chair of Working Group 3, Dr. Ottmar Endenhofer, November 13, 2010 interview

St. Louis honors Iraq Vets

2012-01-30T04:55:00.000-08:00

Jack Kemp

Here's a story you probably won't see on MS-NBC...

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/st_louis_honors_iraq_vets_tJG2u36O4jo9o5ByzY0oAO#ixzz1ksvRBDg3
Six hundred veterans, many dressed in camouflage, walked through downtown St. Louis yesterday in the nation’s first big welcome-home for those who fought in the Iraq War.

Organizers estimated that 100,000 people crowded city streets for the parade, cheering, waving American flags and holding signs that said “Welcome Home” and “Thanks to our Service Men and Women.”

Some of the war-tested troops wiped away tears as they acknowledged the crowd’s support.

“It’s not necessarily overdue, it’s just the right thing,” said Army Maj. Rich Radford, a 23-year military veteran who walked in the parade alongside his 8-year-old daughter, Aimee, and 12-year-old son, Warren.

SECTION OMITTED

The parade was borne out of a chat between two St. Louis friends a month ago

The Drip of Sharia in Dearborn

2012-01-30T04:52:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Dearborn Michigan is a hotbed of Sharia, and a while back the city arrested a pastor for handing out Christian Bible tracts at a Muslim festival held on public streets. A court has found in favor of the pastor, and ordered over a hundred thousand in restitution from the city.

According to the article:

http://www.wnd.com/2012/01/arresting-christians-costs-u-s-city-100000/

"The judge said in the order, “In this case, the plaintiff received the full relief he sought – an invalidation of the leafleting restriction and a permanent injunction barring its enforcement. … Because this result ‘cannot fairly be labeled as anything short of excellent, [plaintiff] is entitled to a fully compensatory fee.’”

End quote.

As to be expected, the city was furious:

"The city had argued that it was ridiculous to think that because it lost the case, it should pay for Saieg’s legal fees.

“Requiring defendants to absorb plaintiff’s attorney’s fees for the district court proceedings in this case would produce the absurd result of punishing defendants for their success in this court and for acting in accordance with precedent endorsed by two federal judges. Moreover, it would send a message that established precedent and this court’s rulings cannot be relied upon given that a plaintiff potentially could persuade the 6th Circuit to establish new precedent,” the city argued.

The judge suggested that the pastor did, in fact, prevail on his free speech claim.

“Defendants may have believed that they were ‘acting in accordance with precedent endorsed by two federal judges,’ but the 6th Circuit ultimately held that they were not acting in accordance with the Constitution,” he said."

End quote.

But that is the whole point; the city doesn't care so much about winning a conviction as chilling free speech by making the arrest. The old saw "you can't fight city hall" is appropo, because the plan is to punish people for exercising their free speech rights by forcing them to defend against a government that has plenty of taxpayer cash to pursue such attacks. Even if the defendent wins he loses, and so his (and other people's) behavior will be modified to the city's liking. In short, without the city having to pay here the city wins. They know that.

They will keep arresting people until they get what they want.

The judge in this case had no other choice, and indeed magistrate Judge R. Steven Whalenis to be commended for his actions.

But this type of thing will happen more frequently, and less grounded judges will hear the cases. Eventually the Muslims will begin building case precedents that favor their "right" to Sharia and codify that into the civil law code. Islam works like water, finding it's way into cracks in in the concrete then expanding and contracting until the small crack leads to a shattered piece of pavement. They do this in every nation, every society in which they gain a toehold. They demand, they threaten, they cajole, and their neighbors eventually give in, much like a weak parent eventually gives in to his or her screaming toddler in the middle of a tantrum. Give in once, and it becomes easier to give in again, and this becomes a way of life. Eventually you have full-blown Sharia; the non-Muslims become second class citizens in their own countries. It's a tactic that has served Islam well over the centuries - and it serves extraordinarily well in the modern West, which has lost it's sense of self. The West no longer believes in the value of Western Civilization, and concepts of pluralism, multiculturalism and political correctness have made it impossible to censure bad behavior because it is somehow considered "intolerant". Islam is killing us with our own tolerance. They know it, too.

This strikes back at the civil jihad, but for how long?

New Gospels translation not to offend Muslims

2012-01-30T04:26:00.000-08:00

Jack Kemp

I don't know where to begin. In a very mixed up world, this Jew is defending old time Christian missionary texts. I never thought I'd do this, but Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs website is informing us that new translations of the New Testament to be distributed in Muslim countries do not refer to "God the Father" or the "Son of God." Have mainstream Christian organizations walked away from their belief in Christianity? Do they expect Muslims to respect this and rush to convert to the religion of the Holy Trinity?

Here is a link and an excerpt from the Atlas Shrugs article. I suggest you read it all, no matter what your faith - or non-faith.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2012/01/new-bible-versions-remove-father-and-son-of-god-because-it-offends-muslims.html

New Bible Versions REMOVE ‘Father’ and ‘Son Of God’ Because It Offends Muslims

Mainline Christian organizations are changing their holy scripture to avoid offending Muslims. Not only does this violate Scripture, but it also defeats the purpose of their mission--to share the Gospel. If mainline Christian organizations fear Muslims so much that they have to edit what they believe to be the Word of God, how far can they be from submission? Where are the righteous, the outraged, the proud?

It is Islamic authorities who should be excising the quran and hadith of the ideology that calls for jihad, genocide, subjugation and oppression of women, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and all non-Muslims. It is the ummah who should be calling for sharia bans. Instead, the Christians are bastardizing their scripture? The Muslims refer to Christians in their daily prayers as "those who are led astray" (Muslims curse Christians and Jews multiple times in daily prayers). This madness validates their contempt and supremacism:

"Concerned Christian missionaries, Bible translators, pastors, and national church leaders have come together with a public petition to stop these organizations. They claim a public petition is their last recourse because meetings with these organizations’ leaders, staff resignations over this issue and criticism and appeals from native national Christians concerned about the translations “have failed to persuade these agencies to retain “Father” and “Son” in the text of all their translations.”
http://biblicalmissiology.org/2012/01/16/fact-check-biblical-missiologys-response-to-wycliffes-comments-on-lost-in-translation/

Biblical Missiology, a ministry of Boulder, Colorado-based Horizon International, is sponsoring the petition. The main issues of this controversy surround new Arabic and Turkish translations. Here are three examples native speakers give:

First, Wycliffe and SIL have produced Stories of the Prophets, an Arabic Bible that uses an Arabic equivalent of “Lord” instead of “Father” and “Messiah” instead of “Son.”

'Second, Frontiers and SIL have produced Meaning of the Gospel of Christ , an Arabic translation which removes “Father” in reference to God and replaces it with “Allah,” and removes or redefines “Son.”
For example, the verse which Christians use to justify going all over the world to make disciples, thus fulfilling the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19) reads, “Cleanse them by water in the name of Allah, his Messiah and his Holy Spirit” instead of “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Rev. Bassam Madany, an Arab American who runs Middle East Resources, terms these organization’s efforts as “a western imperialistic attempt that’s inspired by cultural anthropology, and not by biblical theology.” (morehere)'"

End quote

Report: American Bible translators bowdlerize scriptures to avoid offending Muslims: no "Father" and "Son" Jihadwatch http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/01/report-american-bible-translaters-bowdlerize-scriptures-to-avoid-offending-muslims.html

If this is true, for the parties they are trying not to offend, anything short of Islam -- of professing that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammad is his messenger -- would be "offensive." This is not making Christianity more palatable. It is de-Christianizing it. It is manufacturing yet another Christian heresy.

END OF QUOTE

A Moonbat Idea from Newt?

2012-01-29T07:22:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

In regards to Moonbat Newt's Lunie Moonbase (which I argue is not at all Loonie at CFP http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/44253), turns out I'm not the only one picking up on that Helium 3 business. Jim Hoft, the Gateway Pundit, has a piece discussing the matter.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/01/newts-moonbase-could-provide-enough-helium-3-in-one-space-shuttle-load-to-power-entire-us-for-a-year/

From the blogpost:

"Some experts estimate there a millions of tons in lunar soil — and that a single Space-Shuttle load would power the entire United States for a year. Both China and Russia have stated their nations’ interest in helium-3."

He goes on to quote an article in Discovery News:

http://news.discovery.com/space/this-moon-was-made-for-mining-helium-3.htmlAs Discovery News reports,
"Thanks to a critical shortage last year, the price of the isotope helium-3 has skyrocketed from $150 per liter to $5,000 per liter.

Helium wasn’t technically “discovered” on Earth until about 1895, despite being abundant in the universe. Almost all of the global supply of helium is located within 250 miles of Amarillo, Texas; it’s distilled from accumulated natural gas and extracted during the refining process.

Since the 1920s, the US has considered its helium stockpile as an important strategic natural resource, amassing some 32 billion cubic feet in an underground bunker in Texas, but for several years now, it’s been selling off that stockpile bit by bit to interested industrial buyers.

Helium is used for arc welding and leak detection, mostly, although NASA uses it to pressurize space shuttle fuel tanks. Liquid helium cools infrared detectors, nuclear reactors, and the superconducting magnets used in MRI machines, too. The fear is that, at current consumption rates, that underground bunker will be empty within 20 years, leaving the earth almost helium-free by the end of the 21st century. This could be bad for US industry."

End excerpt.

Get that? Helium 3 is selling for five grand a litre! That's more expensive than caviar, more expensive than the Kobe beef that Obama is so fond of, even more expensive than a gallon of gasoline in an Obama dream world. And we're going to just sit here and let the Chinese and Russians get it!

The Moon has other rare earth materials worth going after. We need to go there.

And Newt isn't a johnny-come-lately to this; in 1981 he introduced a bill that would manage lunar settlement and set up a way for a moon colony to become a state of the Union!

From Instapundit:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/136040/

"It looks like the bill was introduced in the 97th Congress as HR 4286, The National Space and Aeronautics Policy Act of 1981. Title IV of the bill dealt with the government of space territories.

The bill had 12 cosponsors — both R’s & D’s, including Tim Wirth, Robert Roe, Charlie Wilson, Bob Dornan, & Ed Derwinski."

End excerpt.

So Newt has been thinking ahead on this issue for some time. And what would be wrong with making the Moon (a planet with the surface area of Africa and room for even more as we would have to settle underground, thus making it actually larger in terms of space than the Earth which is largely a surface-only proposition) the 51st. state? It's close enough for nearly instant communication, and with the internet the settlers would hardly be cut off. The main problem would be the gravity; can children grow in low G? Will people who live on the Moon be able to tolerate a trip to Earth? Maybe not - but that's the whole point of trying. They won't have any shortage of volunteers. (I'd volunteer myself; with my bad heart I might live longer in low G.)

What would a lunar colony be like? It would have to be underground. First off, cosmic rays would zap any surface dwellers (the astronauts reported seeing cosmic rays as flashes on their retinas - even when their eyes were closed.) The big danger, though, are solar storms. If you were on the surface during a solar storm you would die. A moonbase would have to be buried under the lunar regolith. At first, it would be a small affair, just some buried rooms. It would be oppressive. But over time it could would be possible to build much bigger structures.

One suggestion is to build in a rille. Lunar rilles are giant canyons, the remains of collapsed lava flow tubes. They radiate like spokes on a bicycle wheel from impact craters. Build a domed structure in a rille and blast the sides of the canyon, collapsing the dirt onto the dome. Voila! Instant settlement.

But there are numerous flow tubes that haven't collapsed and wont collapse, and some go quite deep into the Moon. We've found the entrances to a couple. A lava flow tube is a long cavern that forms as hot molten lava flows from a volcanoe or impact site. The surrounding matter cools faster than the flowing lava (which is moving) and the tube the lava is flowing through closes up on one end and the lava flows right out, leaving a long hollow tube, usually with a flat bottom. On Earth they tend to be small, but in low gravity they can be huge. On the Moon they can be hundreds of miles long and dozens of miles wide.

And study of the flow tubes we've found on the Moon suggest they are about -50* Fahrenheit. On Earth we would call this bitterly cold, but it drops that low in SOUTHERN Alaska and people live through it. Night time temperatures on the Moon drop to -250, making it far, far colder and requiring much more energy to bring up to a comfortable temperature. The daytime temperature of250* does not affect the tube, which remains pretty constantly cold. A colony could be built in one of these tubes. The proponderance of silicates in the lunar soil would make the walls of such a tube glasslike, so it would be rather like living in a gigantic greenhouse (minus the sun, which could be brought in with periscopes). All that would be needed would be a way to bring in sunlight, power (available from sunlight, or a nuclear reactor) and a pressurized environment. Oxygen is plentiful on the Moon. Lunar dust could be converted into dirt by microorganisms. Water could be brought in from permanently shadowed spots in craters and whatnot.

Eventually such a habitat would be enormous, and not at all like living in a basement. It would appear to the inhabitants like a world, with ceilings hundreds of feet above and miles of open ground, You could have rivers, streams, lakes, forests, and beaches there. Careful use of mirrors would give you the sun, and perhaps the Earth (which would be an impressive night view). Settle near the poles and you don't have the problem of a two week day/night cycle. Use nuclear power in places away from the poles to generate sunlight at night.

Oh, and the first settlers would be able to fly with muscle-powered wings. Those growing up on the Moon would probably be too weak, unless they spend a fair amount of time in higher gravity.

Gravity will be the main problem; we have no real substitute for gravity on a world. In space centrifugal force (yes, I know; that's an illusion, the result of centripidal acceleration) can be used to make a kind of gravity, but that won't work on a planetary body like the Moon. And it is a serious consideration; a 240 lb. man will only weight 40 lbs. on the Moon, and his muscles will atrophy quickly. Returnees from the space station are just about invalids for a time (of course, they are in zero G not in 1/6 gravities.) Even if children could be born on the Moon and grow normally, they will be far more fragile and weak than their Earthly cousins. I don't see any way around that. And they will be susceptible to diseases since their habitats will be isolated and more sterile. It may eb that they will never be able to go back to Earth.

But what of it? Earth is the largest terrestrial planet, and if they can live in low G they can go to any other potentially habitable world and get along fine. Mars would be a bit heavy, but, thanks to lower density, Ganymede and Callisto would be like home, as would Titan. Triton, Neptune's moon, would be a bit too light.

Of course, it may be that we can't live in low gravity, which will mean lunar settlements will be temporary places, industrial complexes. That is o.k., too; we could build permanent colonies in orbit and spin them for higher gravity. These suckers could be HUGE; Gerard O'Neil worked out the economics of space colonies and figured his standard colony as twenty to forty miles long by four to ten wide. http://www.nss.org/settlement/space/oneillcylinder.htm

Or you could build a Bernal Sphere, a round structure that offers variable gravity for different people.

The hitch in all of this is solar storm shielding; O'Neil never did work out a good way to protect against solar storms. He suggested special shelters for the public during a storm, which is fine for people but not so good for the plants and animals left outside of the shelters (and the whole point is to create an Earthlike environment). It does not take into account what would happen to microorganisms. What kinds of diseases would be created by genetic mutation?

And the cost would be literally astronomical. I don't see space colonies in our near future. But a moonbse is doable.

We've got to start somewhere.

To steal a phrase from a source I can't recall at the moment "if God didn't intend for Man to colonize space he wouldn't have put a whole planet a couple of hundred thousand miles over our heads". We have the only terrestrial planet with such a situation. Mercury and Venus have no moons. Mars has two puny things that look more like asteroids. Yes, Pluto has a giant satellite, but Pluto is no bigger than the Earth's moon and is composed of frozen gases. It's not really a planet but a kind of super sized comet in a more regular orbit. Even the outer planets with their outsized moons aren't like ours in that they are frozen water ice and gases surrounding much smaller rocky cores. Only the Earth has an actual planetary body in orbit. Why we wouldn't be interested in it is beyond me.

Many people oppose going back to the Moon as a waste of time. Some think we should go on to Mars. I think both views are myopic. My essay at Canada Free Press explains my reasons for wanting a permanent American presence on the Moon, and I think Mankind is an expansionistic species that requires more than just the world around him to be happy and productive. A frontier is needed, a place where the energetic, the ambitious, the old line American types, can go and create. A settled world will slide into despair as the walls of civilization grow ever higher. And going to Mars is silly for now; it's too far, and all we will do is go and look at rocks at a huge expense. We will go and not go back in person. Oh, we'll use plenty of robots, but people just won't bother. That isn't what we need; we need people actually living and working out there. We need settlement. We need money to be made. We need competition.

I was reading the comments at Discover magazine about Gingrich's remarks, and the liberal crowd was complaining about Gingrich wanting America to be there first, because they want us all to go together; they believe in globalism, in one world, and don't want one nation to advance over any other. We'll never accomplish anything that way. The space station has been a huge boondoggle because we turned it from an American enterprise and made it an international cooperative effort. Too many cooks spoil the broth. And competition is GOOD, a force that spurs people forward. The liberal beliefs in the inevitability of internationalism and socialism are horribly misplaced; that way will lead to inevitable decay and collapse. Human beings simply are not herd animals. We need individual challenges, and tribal challenges.

We need a frontier. I would like that frontier to be settled by America and her allies. Western Civilization has been the most productive, most fruitful, fairest civilization in history. We have advanced art, science, technology, all of the things that have blessed the world in modern times have been the product of our unique systems of economics, our philosophy, our Judeo-Christian religion. Should China settle space the colonies would be gulags, prisons with people locked under the thumbs of the state. Ditto Russia. I don't mind them coming along, but WE need to be the standard bearers. Our settlements must be homes to freedom, places where people can get away from statism and control. And we'll be happy to bring the poor and downtrodden with us. We're the only ones who would do that.

The future depends on the choices we make in the present. Open space to commerce, to adventurers, to PEOPLE. The problem that the space program suffered from is the elitism of the lucky few chosen to be astronauts. NASa tried to solve that by sending up teachers and other gimmicky things. No. The answer is to make it possible for any person to go. The key is to make it profitable. The key is to make it a frontier and not a nature preserve. The Federal government did that to Alaska, and look how well that worked. Sure, Alaska is pretty, but nobody would call it a great place to move to - and not because it's cold.

If we want a bright future we are going to have to go up there. And to do that we are going to have to settle the Moon. It really is that simple.

Here is an interesting paper discussing ways to build a moon base.
http://soe.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/gset/lunar.pdf

Famine and the Rise of the North American Union

2012-01-29T06:11:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Mexico is suffering from drought, the results of La Nina, and the nation is on the brink of starvation as famine moves in. http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=472296&Itemid=1

According to the article:

"At least 50 percent of the municipalities of the country and 1.4 million hectares are affected by adverse weather conditions, specialist Emilio Romero told La Jornada newspaper.

In 2011, Mexico lost over 3.2 million tons of corn, 600,000 of beans and 60,000 head of cattle, according to official statistics.

Estimates show that 1,213 municipalities in 19 territories (50 percent of the country) have been affected by the worst drought over the past 50 years."

End excerpt.

Now, Mexico never suffered terrible drought when we had Global Warming; the terrible drought is occuring during a cooling trend. The Earth has been in a cooling trend for the last 15 years, or at least is not warming statistically, and now that we are no longer warming we are having famines. We need a little global warming! Historically, the warmer periods are the ones that have been more productive agriculturally. The Mound Builders of Cahokia flourished during the Medieval Warming Period, and their once-enormous metropolis failed when cooler weather set in. Ditto the Mayans, who were living in the Yucatan but ended up moving to Guatemala after the cooling began. Ditto the Incans. The Mongols poured out of the desolate Gobi desert when their food supply increased during the MWP. The Polynesians settled many of their Pacific islands during the MWP, yet by the time the Europeans discovered them many had fallen into barbarity. This is certainly true of Easter Island, where a civilization was able to build those big ponderous heads that so resemble Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama. Herman Melville speaks of evidence he saw on Nuka Hiva of an advanced civilization that fell. Why? Likely the end of the MWP saw the food supply drop.

And now we face famine in Mexico. This year's La Nina has shifted the jet stream, moving warmer, wetter air to the North and a strong Arctic Oscillation is keeping the cold air circulating around the Arctic, thus making a lower pressure region over the U.S. and Canada. In short, Mexico has been bipassed this year, and crop failures are the result.

But there's more; the ethanol mandate in the United States for gasoline has driven the price of corn sky high, and corn is one of the staples of the Mexican diet. Mexico just couldn't afford to lose any crops - but has done so anyway.

Couple this with the civil chaos that the drug cartels are causing (and much thanks for that can go to the Obama Justice Department, which has been supplying all manner of deadly weapons to the drug lords as part of "Operation Fast and Furious") and you have a recipe for disaster. Without oil Mexico would be finis.

And let us not forget that Mexico is STILL a socialist country, with the ruling party refusing any sort of reform.

NOW is the time for the U.S. to press for Mexico to scrap her socialist system and go fully toward a market-based economy. Now is the time to push for more openness in the Mexican government. This government in power has failed miserably because Mexicans do not enjoy the fruits of their labor. But the U.S. is moving in the direction of Mexico, rather than the other way around, and with the current socialist in power in Washington there will be no pressure to reform. We could also get Mexico to increase oil production to drive down oil prices, but with President Windbag Windmill in office I don't expect that to happen.

What will happen? If things are bad enough, the U.S. will bail out Mexico (which means we will have to be bailed out by China) and Mexico will become a client state. What does that mean?

WELCOME TO THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION!

Yes, the North American Union will be at hand. Should the U.S. bail out Mexico (especially without insisting on reforms) we will have to take over a number of Mexican functions (and this can be sold as a matter of national security) and voila, we have permanent ties to Mexico, ties that future politicians will only strengthen. And even more Mexicans will enter the U.S. illegally, because we WON'T insist on reforms, and there will be no way to make a living. As Mexico empties into the U.S. the concept of a border will grow vague, and eventually will be erased. North America will become another E.U., a misanthropic empire of disparate peoples under one system. After that? Let's just say World Government is the next logical step.

The E.U. is an abject failure, and yet we rush headlong into creating a North American version. There is a serious effort to create the North American Union, and there is a scheme to create a United States of Africa as well. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/15/501364/main20043506.shtml Anyone who doesn't believe the end game is world government is kidding themselves. Why create super regional governments when the smaller local governments are failures? How is it an improvement to increase the size and scope of government when local government does not work? One would only believe that a U.S. of Africa is a good thing if you wanted world government; it would be but a means to an end. A U.S. of Africa would simply multiply the disaster that is Zimbabwe across the continent.

The theory with the NAU is that the U.S. and Canada would prop up Mexico, acting to dilute the poverty there. It's vintage collectivist thinking; we have too much wealth in the anglo north and we can simply share it with the Mexicans in the south. Creating a North American Union means being fair, not letting those evil American and Canadian people horde the wealth they were blessed with. That Mexico has an enormous bounty of natural resources and good land is immaterial; it's not a systemic failure, but the greed of the northerners. Put them together in one country and the "unnatural" boundaries will disappear as all share the wealth.

Not sure what wealth there is to share in a U.S. of Africa. South Africa and Rhodesia were, whatever their faults, prosperous under "colonial" rule; the integration of the new nations into inter-tribal countries has destroyed whatever prosperity they had - especially in what was Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe. But again, that isn't the point. The point is to establish these uber structures that can then be integrated into a worldwide federation run by the U.N.

This projected famine in Mexico would not be a worry had Mexico not been a socialist state. It would have been tough, yes, but the Mexican economy could have absorbed the losses and found ways to come back. Mexico is facing famine because it does not have a free system. Command economies always fail under pressure. They are too weak, too feeble to turn lemons into lemonade. Nobody cares enough to take initiative. Mexico's answer to stagnant economic growth was to export her unemployed to the U.S. Outsourcing their poverty bought them some time, but did nothing to fundamentally reform the problems that Mexico suffered. Those problems are systemic. And now the winds of fortune are blowing down the house of cards that the socialists have built.

When will Mankind realize the utter stupidity of socialism? It never works, yet we keep trying, trying. Always, it's just a matter of getting the right people in charge "we are the ones we have been waiting for" yet it always produces poverty, inequity, misery. And every time it fails that failure is used as an excuse for more of what caused the trouble in the first place.

This Mexican famine will be a golden opportunity for the American socialists. Beware!

Muchos Gracias to Ron De Haan

The New American Elite

2012-01-29T05:16:00.000-08:00

By Alan Caruba

The only constant in the life of individuals and nations is change. Since the beginning of the last century, the process or rate of change has accelerated with the invention and availability of a myriad of machines, technologies that have altered the lifestyle of Americans as well as of millions around the world.

Let me put it in personal terms. When I was born in the late 1930s, my Mother washed the family laundry by hand and hung it out to dry on sunny days or in the basement of our home if it was raining. We were not poor. We were middle class. My Father was a Certified Public Accountant and we lived in a spacious suburban home in an upscale New Jersey community. Mass produced washers and dryers would arrive after the end of World War Two.

The differences between lower economic classes, the middle class, and upper classes were well defined back then. All, however, generally held the same values regarding societal institutions such as marriage, religion, national pride. Those values have eroded since the 1960s and Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute www.aei.org, whose new book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010” ($27.00, Crown Forum) tells you how and why.

Murray takes the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22,, 1963 as the starting point, noting, for example, that “Not only were Americans almost always married, mothers normally stayed at home to raise their children. More than 80 percent of married women with children were not working outside the home in 1963.”

“Part of these widely shared values lay in the religiosity of America in 1963” and Murray compares this to a 1963 Gallup poll in which “Only one percent of respondents said they did not have a religious preference, and half said they had attended a worship service in the previous seven days. These answers showed almost no variations across classes.”

“The racial differences in income, education, and occupations were all huge, noted Murray. “The civil rights movement was the biggest domestic issue of the early 1960s…” By 1963, “Poverty had been dropping so rapidly for so many years that Americans thought things were going well.”

The changes in values that many Americans deplore today were coming. “The first oral contraceptive pill had gone on the market in 1960 and its use was spreading widely.” Murray points out that “The leading cohorts of the baby boomers were in their teens by November 21, 1963, and, for better or worse, they were going to be who they were going to be. No one understood at the time what a big difference it could make if one age group of a population is abnormally large. Everyone was about to find out.”

“This book,” wrote Murray, “is about the evolution in American society that has taken place since November 21, 1963, leading to the formation of classes that are different in kind and in their degree of separation from anything that the nation has ever known.”

The culture that Americans shared uniquely and in contrast to much of the world, warns Murray “is unraveling” as “America is coming apart at the seams—not the seams of race or ethnicity, but of class.”

Murray defines the new upper class “as the most successful five percent of adults ages 25 and older who are working in managerial positions, in the professions (medicine, the law, engineering and architecture, the sciences, and university faculty), and in content-production jobs in the media.”

“As of 2010, about 23 percent of all employed persons aged 25 or older were in these occupations, which means that about 1,427,000 persons constituted the top 5 percent. Since 69 percent of adults in these occupations who were ages 25 and older were married in 2010, about 2.4 million adults were in new-upper-class families as heads of households or spouse.” That’s a very small slice of 330 million Americans.

They are not the “millionaires and billionaires” that President Obama is always blathering about. They are the new “establishment” that determine much about the nation’s culture, economy, and future.

To boil down Murray’s extensive research and reporting, that top 5 percent are largely isolated from the rest of the population because they tend to live where their counterparts live and interact mostly with one another in all aspects of their lives. They are the new “elite.”

“Rolling back income inequality won’t make any difference in the isolation of the new upper class from the rest of America.” They are wealthy by most standards and Murray expects them to become wealthier over time. Thus, all the talk of “fairness” and “a fair share” is meaningless.

“Fairness” as many point out, is just another word for “class warfare.” It has always been the siren call of communism.

Efforts in America and in Europe to create “fairness” in the form of our “entitlement” programs and the extensive European socialism have reached a point where they threaten to collapse our own and the economies of many European nations.

Murray says “We have been the product of the cultural capital bequeathed to us by the system the founders laid down; a system that says people must be free to live life as they see fit and to be responsible for the consequences of their actions; that it is not the government’s job to protect people from themselves; that it is not the government’s job to stage-manage how people interact with one another. Discard the system that created the cultural capital, and the qualities we have loved about Americans will go away.”

The system, of course, is free-market capitalism, deregulation, and lower marginal income tax rates, all within the context of the U.S. Constitution. It is under attack by the President of the United States and a cohort of civil service and industrial unions, along with liberal members of Congress.

It is why the Republican primaries have been, in part, a desperate effort to educate Americans to the reason America is in peril and why Americans must strive to restore the values that were shared on November 22, 1963.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Fly Me to the Moon; Why Gingrich was Right about Returning to the Moon at Canada Free Press

2012-01-28T15:14:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

My latest at Canada Free Press.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/44253

Newt was right; we need to go back to the Moon. I explain why.

Smearing Newt

2012-01-28T15:11:00.000-08:00

Dana Mathewson

This guy gets it right. Take names of the pundits who insist Mitt's the thing, see if they were the ones who pushed for Dole and McCain in turn, and ignore them in 2016 after Zippy wins in 2012. http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/smearing-newt-taking-names-for-2016/

No Need to Panic about Global Warming

2012-01-28T05:59:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

No need to panic about Global Warming.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

From the article:

"In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts."

[...]

"Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job."

[...]

"Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

Related Video

Princeton physics professor William Happer on why a large number of scientists don't believe that carbon dioxide is causing global warming.

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet."

SIGNED:

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

Green Lebensraum

2012-01-28T05:19:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Our old friend Mark Musser has a great piece about Lebensraum and it's intellectual ties to the modern E.U. in a piece at American Thinker.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/green_lebensraum_the_nazi_roots_of_sustainable_development.html

The Nazis were Greens, splashed with brown paint, as Mark puts it. The new paint job is red, but in either case the inner color is green.

This is one you don't want to miss!

Environment friendly house and car: I'm Melting, I'm Melting

2012-01-28T04:28:00.000-08:00

Jack Kemp

CBS reports that (video included):
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/01/25/woman-claims-neighbors-energy-efficient-windows-are-melting-her-toyota-prius/

A SoCal woman says the energy efficient window installed in a neighbor’s condominium is melting the plastic components on cars parked in her carport.

Heather Patron of Studio City was dealing with a mystery regarding her Toyota Prius.

“The side view mirrors were melting,” says Patron. “Anything that was plastic on the car was melting.”

Toyota told Patron nothing was wrong with the car. After having the mirrors replaced, she noticed the mirrors on the car parked next to hers were also melting.
END QUOTE

The solution is simple. Park near an windmill turbine. It will kill any birds that might "deposit" on your windshield.

To My Paulian Friends

2012-01-27T04:33:00.000-08:00

Dana Mathewson

... and others who "like Ron Paul's ideas." Or just wonder what Ron Paul is all about.

http://rightwingnews.com/democrats/ron-paul-not-a-serious-candidate/

Rich Is The New Gay

2012-01-27T04:28:00.000-08:00

Jack E. Kemp

This is the most profound insight I've seen in a while. It ranks with "politics is organized hate." Posted at Tea Party Nation by Tm Nerenz,

Below are the opening lines and a link. One may have to register (for free) to access the link, but it is well worth the small effort.

http://www.teapartynation.com/profiles/blogs/rich-is-the-new-gay

Rich Is The New Gay
Posted by Tim Nerenz on January 24, 2012 at 7:25pm
It’s ok to hate them for who they are. It’s ok to vandalize their property, taunt them, seize their assets, deny them government benefits, make them register and buy a license to practice their alternative lifestyle.

You can hound them at their workplace, you can bully them in schools, you can picket their homes, you can send them death threats with impunity, and you can occupy public buildings for months on end chanting bad things about them.

Rich is the new gay.

It is no longer permissible in our civil society to hate based on skin color, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, or sexual preference. But wealth – that’s a free-fire zone. Wealth is evil. Capitalism is sodomy. Free enterprise is lewd and lascivious conduct. Wall Street is the new Castro Street, only it’s ok to light it on fire. Even Tiffany Newt feels free to tee off on Mitt Romney for being (gasp) too rich – think Ellen reefing on Elton John to win George Michael’s vote.

You can say the most hateful things imaginable about rich people - even the President does it, cheered on by a wealth-o-phobic media. Imagine how the fur would fly if a President blamed all his failures on homosexuals, or if he expressed support for violent mobs rioting in the streets if it were the 3.6% instead of the 1% whose heads are demanded on a pole.

REPEAL 17TH AMENDMENT POSTER BOY

2012-01-27T04:19:00.000-08:00

William Been

When the Founders created our Republic, it was their intention that the two senators from each state were to be representative of the political policies and direction of the individual state. With this objective in mind, Article 1, Section 3 of the Constitution establishes the Senate as follows: The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote.”

Among the various reasons that the Founders considered when designating the State Legislatures was their desire and intent to assemble a select assembly. Quoting John Jay from No. 64 of the Federalist Papers: “…as the State Legislatures who appoint the senators will in general be composed of the most enlightened and respectable citizens, there is reason to presume that their attention and their votes will be directed to those men only who have become the most distinguished by their abilities and virtue, and in whom the people perceive just grounds for confidence.”

Throughout the 19th century, there were various calls to change the senator selection process to a direct election by the people. Among the reasons given for changing the selection process were corruption charges at the state level during the selection process while the Populous and Progressive Movements pushed from the perspective of pure democracy. Eventually, during the heights of the Progressive Movement of Woodrow Wilson, the selection process was changed by the ratification of the 17th Amendment on April 8, 1913. The 17th Amendment simply changed the appointment by the State Legislative bodies to a direct election of the people from each state.

Fast forward to 2012. The worst of the Founders fears is now playing out across our country as we now talk about how much money it will take to win an election, we now hear that 20% of the voters don’t make up their minds until the last two months before an election, we now see radio and television ads of questionable integrity designed to sway the voters, we now see multiple special interest groups outside of the state influencing elections, we see disinterest at all levels of society, we see the Hollywood image trumping enlightenment, and sadly we see elections where the majority of the voters do not participate believing their vote will make no difference.

So now we approach the election of 2012 when Bob Casey is running for re-election as U. S. senator in Pennsylvania . While pondering the picture of Senator Casey, one cannot help but question the lack of wisdom exhibited by ratification of the 17th Amendment. Instead of the sitting Senator being closely tied to his state as the Founders intended, Senator Casey portrays himself as being a servant to the sitting President. His picture in his senatorial office is truly worth a thousand words. It reflects the diametrical opposite to what the Founders intended.

Again referencing the Federalist Papers, No. 64, John Jay makes it clear that the Founders desired to avoid elections by the people “where the activity of party zeal” takes advantage of the electorate. Party zeal and obedience to President Obama have been portrayed throughout Senator Casey’s current term. While the Pennsylvania electorate is belittled by the President as those who cling to their guns and religion, the sitting senator turns his back on the people of Pennsylvania and professes his unqualified support for the President with a 98% voting record favoring Obama Progressivism. Further illustrating Senator Casey’s disdain for Pennsylvania citizens, as well as the traditions of our great country, was his appearance as one of the keynote speakers at the Pennsylvania Progressive Summit held in January, 2011 at Pittsburgh.

Rather than representing the state of Pennsylvania as intended by the Founders, Senator Casey has identified himself as a part of the Progressive Movement that portrays its anti-American ideology through various radical organizations. His behavior and his record have defined him as being part of the Soros/Obama transformation of America. Perhaps Senator Casey should describe what America looks like when the Progressive Movement completes this transformation process that he so eagerly embraces.

Concerning corruption being a detriment to the original Constitutional intent, an attorney friend stated firmly that it would be much better to have the corruption closer to the people at the state level rather than being buried in the huge Washington bureaucracy. This statement is validated by the fact that over 30% of the money donated to Senator Casey comes from outside of Pennsylvania from various special interests. Also, consider the huge amount of money that George Soros and his allies pour through various PACs into the Democrat Party for support of Democrat candidates. As Eli Pariser of the Soros funded MoveOn.org stated after the 2004 election cycle concerning the Democrat Party: “Now it is our party, we bought it, we own it...”

In closing, as we watch dishonesty being the rule rather than the exception at all levels of political discourse, it is worthwhile to again consider the original intent of the Founders where State Legislatures would select those men who are most distinguished by their abilities and virtues. With 23 Democrat seats up for re-election, now is the time to elect conservatives who value the Constitution and roll back the Progressive Movement. The 17th Amendment would be a great starting place.

No Pennsylvania Senator should be ideologically tied to the President as a part of OBAMA’S PEOPLE which the Pennsylvania elections of 2010 made perfectly clear. However, 2010 was only a starting point and many Americans do not recognize the threat posed by the Progressive Movement which still holds the power in Washington DC by having infiltrated the federal government through the election of officials who blindly follow the transformation leaders to a destination that has never been defined to the American people.

How the UN "freezes out" Holocaust Survivors' Families

2012-01-27T04:12:00.000-08:00

Jack Kemp

January 27th is the date for the U.N.'s Holocaust Memorial Day, designated in 2005. The same memorial day is observed by the European Union. This January date coincides with the liberation of Auschwitz, yet Israel observes "Yom HaShoah" (Holocaust Day) on a Hebrew calendar date that falls in March or April of each year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_Memorial_Day

Why the discrepancy in dates? When the Israelis designated their day of Holocaust remembrance, they wisely looked to a future when most younger Holocaust survivors would be aging. Going outside to a memorial service in the dead of winter, even in a place like Jerusalem, is a daunting thing for a senior citizen. The U.N. And the Israeli government knew that American, Canadian and British Jews would hold their commemorations on or near the same date as the commemorations in Jerusalem. By having the event in the spring, the outdoor weather would not be such a problem for a future diminishing population of survivors.

While there is symbolism in picking the January date, yet there were many other concentration and labor camps besides Auschwitz scattered across Germany, Poland, France, the Soviet Union and elsewhere. The U.N. "coincidentally" chose a date most inconvenient for elderly Jews. By 2005, when the U.N. declared their memorial date, a twenty year old Holocaust survivor would be eighty, might live in Canada or Chicago or Stockholm - and would probably have to stay home to avoid snow drifts and strong winds. Thus the U.N. and the European Union chose a date that is the equivalent of free Bungee jumps for seniors. It was a sophisticated insult, in my opinion. Yes, most of the original survivors were dead by 2005, but their adult children, often around age sixty by 2005, would also be inclined to avoid a U.N. "cold shoulder commemoration" in northern climes.

Laframboise and McKitrick on the IPCC

2012-01-27T04:09:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Over at Ecofascism, William Kay writes about the IPCC:

http://www.ecofascism.com/review27.html

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is at the forefront of the global warming hoax. IPCC Assessment Reports are gospels to politicians and journalists. Two recent publications – investigative journalist Donna Laframboise’s woefully titled The Delinquent Teenager who was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert, and economics professor Ross McKitrick’s What is Wrong With the IPCC? – slam-dunk these Assessment Reports into the dumpster. What follows is a collated, abridgement of these two documents."

Ecofascism is a must-visit for anyone interested in the Global Warming swindle.

Romney Defends Brian Williams

2012-01-26T05:48:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Yet more proof that Mitt Romney is horribly clueless.
http://www.breitbart.tv/mitt-hits-newt-very-easy-to-criticize-debate-moderator/

First, the stupidity of the GOP in general to give liberal mainstream media marionettes control over the debates goes beyond astonishing. Why does our side put the enemy in charge? Just because a guy is a network anchor doesn't mean he has any credibility. It's time we stop affording the Left's attack dogs respect. Perhaps we have to accept this in the general election debates, but why the primaries?

It's like making Richard Dawkins the moderator of an ecumenical church council debate.

Second, if Romney thinks that the media should be allowed to run roughshod over us because they claim to be the unbiased investigators, then he is either a titanic fool or worse. Does Romney really believe the media is NOT biased? Does he not understand that they are diametrically opposed to our interests? Can't he fathom that they will turn on him as soon as he is the nominee? If he doesn't understand this simple fact then he is not the man to lead us. Worse if he does understand it and is using this to his advantage.

How much hand-ringing did Conservatives do over the "attack on Capitalism" by Newt's PAC; will their be comparable wailing and gnashing of teeth over this? I think this is worse, because it suggests that we should listen to the mainstream media and accept their views as honest. The media is owned by Obama, lock, stock, and barrel. They are liars and the father of lies. That is a fundamental axiom of Conservatism, because the media has mischaracterized our views and assassinated our character since the inception of electronic media, and even back into the days of print. You cannot be conservative if you accept the wisdom and honesty of the mainstream media.

This speaks volumes about what Romney believes and what he is willing to do. There is no way a man who defends an attack from the media on a fellow - even if that fellow has been horrible to him - can claim to be a conservative, and there is no way he is going to win the Presidency. Romney has just lost the race, in my opinion.

But then, he, like John McCain before him, is the media choice for GOP candidate.

Let's look at the track record of GOP Establishment candidates.

In 2008 we had John McCain, a darling of the media. He was always invited on Sunday talk shows because he was always good for bashing conservatives. Obama beat him handily.

George W. Bush was an Establishment candidate, but he had a nip-and-tuck with McCain. We may all remember he stalemated with the embarassingly dorkie and idiotic Al Gore in 2000, winning by just a few votes. After becoming President Bush whittled away the GOP margins, losing first the House then the Senate, and finally handing over complete control to the Democrats in 2008.

Bob Dole, the viagra spokesman, so lacked virility that he was soundly beaten by Bill Clinton, a man who was facing impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice. Clinton had no problems similar to Dole's, I might add.

George Herbert Walker Bush, the consummate insider, lost to Clinton because of a very minor recession, one that the media promoted with enormous fanfare prior to the elections. I remember the "signs that a recession may be coming" stories in the media up to a year before the election, and, of course, they managed to destroy consumer confidence to the point that we had a teeny, tiny recession (which the Clinton/Gore camp refered to as the worst economy since the Great Depression) and the bland Mr.Bush lost - despite having been a hugely popular war President, with sky-high numbers only a year before.

In 1980 the Establishment wanted George H.W. Bush, or Bob Dole, to be the nominee. Fortunately Ronald Reagan won, and he ended up annihilating the Democrats - twice!

In 1976 the Establishment promoted default President Gerald R. Ford over Ronald Reagan. Ford was beaten by the pathetic smiley face Jimmy Carter, a man who had to fend off a "killer rabbit" and who gave interviews to Playboy magazine admitting he "lusted in his heart". Carter was a national embarassment, and the Establishment candidate couldn't even beat him.

So now we are to believe the Establishment knows best, that we can only win with the guy who provided the model for Obamacare, with the fellow who was pro-abortion before he was against it, who wants amnesty for illegal aliens and then doesn't, for a Ken doll lookalike without Ken's personality. And this guy is defending the media! Why not nominate Tom Daschle and be done with it? (I hear he isn't too busy these days.) He'd get better press.

In a saner world Romney would be finished with this. Too many conservatives have put their eggs in the Romney basket, and prefer them there to on their faces. (See Ann Coulter's latest act of electorial malpractice here http://www.wnd.com/2012/01/re-elect-obama-vote-newt/

Speaking of eggs, Romney has laid a beauty.

The Race for the Bomb - Then and Now (a Retrospective)

2012-01-26T05:07:00.001-08:00

(Here is an oldie but a goodie. This first appeared at Intellectual Conservative.)

By Timothy Birdnow, on January 4th, 2008

Why do our intelligence people think it will take six years or more for Iran to develop a nuclear device, when the United States was able to do it from scratch in just four, using Second World War technology?

In 1933 a startling idea occurred to a transplanted Hungarian at a traffic light at Southampton Row in London. This physics professor and former student of Albert Einstein had once read H.G. Wells' 1913 The World Set Free in which "atomic disintegration" was used as a superweapon to destroy the industrial world. Our young physicist, a Hungarian-born gentleman by the name of Leo Szilard, knew about the research of Ernest Rutherford in which the great man had discovered the inner structure of atomic nuclei. Daydreaming while at the stoplight, the thought occurred to Szilard that it should be possible to hit atoms with fast moving neutrons and thus split them. At this time there was not a name for such a thing, and it was not even considered theoretically possible. Szilard imagined a superweapon, Wells' "atomic disintegration," which would utilize a chain reaction, neutrons striking atoms, splitting off more neutrons that would strike more atoms, etc.

He went with this to see Rutherford, who summarily tossed him out of his office as a crank.

Szilard began searching for an element that would react as he envisioned. He would have to search for 5 years.

It was the purest of chance. In 1938 Dr. Lise Meitner, a physicist and Jewish woman who had once been at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin but had fled to Sweden to escape the rising anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany, received a letter from an old friend. Dr. Otto Hahn, a longtime collaborator and former student of Rutherford, had bombarded uranium with neutrons, and some of the uranium seemed to have turned into barium. He scribbled out a letter to Meitner, realizing that he was about to either make a total fool of himself or go down in scientific history. Meitner's nephew, Viennese-born Dr. Otto Frisch, happened to be visiting as she was reading the remarkable letter from her old friend. Frisch discussed the matter with a friend who happened to be a biologist, and dubbed the new phenomenon "nuclear fission," naming it after the process of cell division..

Frisch was a staff member of the great Niels Bohr, and he casually related this story to the famous professor. Bohrs was going to Princeton to spend several months at the Institute for Advanced Study, and he leaked the word of Hahn's discovery to some of the members of the Institute. On January 25 he was made a last-minute speaker at the fifth annual Washington Conference, where he gave the details of nuclear fission. The conference exploded.

Still, the matter was considered only of intellectual interest. Szilard and his friend, fellow Hungarian Edward Teller (later to be known as the Father of the Hydrogen Bomb), began agitating for the Roosevelt Administration to fund a project to develop this point of intellectual interest into a superweapon. Nazi Germany had been systematically gobbling up Europe, and the Thousand Year Reich was better positioned to develop such a weapon. They had the scientific firepower, the uranium, and the will to do it. Szilard understood that whoever possessed such a weapon could dominate the world.

But the Roosevelt Administration did not grasp this fact, and they offered lukewarm support, even after Albert Einstein wrote his famous letter (at Szilard's request) advocating the development of an atomic bomb. (He ended up writing a second letter since the first drew virtually no response.)

It would take pressure from the British government and Hitler's amazing early success in Russia before the Roosevelt government would get serious about the effort. Even then, the "Uranium Committee" was given a small budget, and unclear goals. They did not even invite Szilard, Teller, or Enrico Fermi to sit on the committee, since they were immigrants and not considered reliable! The idea of using nuclear power for submarines seemed more promising than building a bomb.

The project was not given full support by Roosevelt until a meeting on October 9, 1941; fully two years after Einstein sent his letter.

On August 6, 1945 the city of Hiroshima disappeared in a mushroom cloud and hellfire. Nearly 140,000 people perished.

This most lethal of weapons was developed entirely from scratch in under 4 years, just 7 years after the uranium atom was first split, 12 years after the vaguest idea that such a thing was even remotely possible occurred to Szilard. Here is a timeline of events. Go here for more on the Manhattan Project.

Consider the difficulties; computers had just been invented, and they did not have calculators, so most of the calculations required had to be done by slide rule and with paper and pencil. There were no transistors or other such electronics, so any equipment they needed had to function with vacuum tubes. They did not have centrifuges that were powerful enough to enrich the Uranium, so they had to use magnets to pick the U235 out atom by atom. (Nobody had ever done such a thing before.) They did not know the critical mass needed; since neutrons strike the atomic nuclei and send more neutrons to strike more atoms-much like one of those domino displays-the exact amount and shape of the Uranium was crucial. Too much and the neutrons would bog down and the chain reaction would fail, too few and it would not get started. The researchers had no idea how much they would need, some of them thought they would need tons. They didn't know how to trigger the reaction, and all sorts of ideas were considered and discarded. (They would finally hit on the idea of using a gun firing uranium bullets for the U bomb but would be forced to develop a means of triggering an implosion for the plutonium variant, since the reaction would have to occur in 1/1,000 of a second.)

They solved all of these problems in under four years with 1940's technology. In fact, they solved it twice, since they not only developed Little Boy which was a uranium-based device, but also Fat Man which was plutonium-based. These were two completely different approaches to the problem, and both worked.

Seven years later the first fusion bomb was exploded by the United States at Enewetak.

On August 29, 1949 the backward Soviet Union had their "First Lightening" atomic test; this from a nation with no known Uranium reserves. Four years later, in 1953, the Soviets detonated a fusion bomb of their own. By 1955 they were testing thermonuclear devices in the megaton range.

Recently our intelligence community put out a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) http://www.odni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf which stated "with moderate confidence" that Iran could not be capable of producing enough Highly Enriched Uranium (HEW, at or above 20% U235, as opposed to Low Enriched Uranium LEW below 20%) to produce an atomic bomb before 2009, and they believe it unlikely before 2013, although they admit that Iran has been running an enrichment program and is currently seeking to purchase more centrifuges for the enrichment of uranium. They judge with "high confidence" that Iran is incapable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before 2015.

They say that Iran had suspended its nuclear program in 2003.

Huh? They have an enrichment program, but that does not constitute a nuclear weapons program? Somebody please explain to me the difference; enrichment of uranium IS the nuclear weapons program!

Iran does not need to work out any technical details. They could obtain design blueprints from North Korea, or purchase them from the Russians or Chinese, or could have gotten them from A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, before his little cottage industry was broken in 2003 (interesting year, wasn't it?). The myriad details that were worked out by the Manhattan Project in less than four years are of no concern to the terror masters in Iran. For that matter, they could probably download a schematic from the Internet.

The crucial issue is the procurement of nuclear material; a nuclear weapons program requires little more than that.

Granted, that is not an easy thing to do. One must either obtain material already processed (something that would be difficult, but not necessarily impossible since the collapse of the old Soviet Union has left materials scattered about and there is no reason to believe that the Chinese would not sell a little on the side — or North Korea) or do the processing oneself.

To make weapons-grade uranium, it is necessary to separate out the highly fissionable U235 from the unrefined ore. (U235 constitutes just .72% of most ore.) This can be accomplished through electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS), the method first used at the Y-12 plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in which electromagnets separate uranium ions. Another early technique requires that the uranium be processed into uranium hexafloride gas and then passed through a filter which allows more of the U235 to penetrate. Rinse, lather, then repeat until you reach 95% U235. Perhaps the most efficient method is to whirl the uranium hexafloride in centrifuges; the heavier isotopes tend to settle to the outside (just like processing sugar). This technique requires far less energy, but necessitates rather sophisticated centrifuge technology; the Manhattan Project could not make this method work, for example. A really high-tech method is to use lasers to selectively excite atoms. The Iranians experimented with this, but abandoned it because it would not allow them to produce what they needed in abundance. Here is a website explaining the enrichment process.

Making plutonium requires a nuclear reactor; U238 is bombarded with neutrons inside a "breeder" reactor to produce U239, which then decays into Neptunium239. The highly radioactive Neptunium then decays into Plutonium 239 which can be "harvested" and used in atomic weapons. The technicians had best be careful; plutonium is highly poisonous, and will kill anyone who is accidentally exposed to it. Should a terrorist try to build a bomb from purchased plutonium he will likely wipe out his entire cell by mishandling the material. Go here to learn more about plutonium production.

In both cases, it is difficult to hide a clandestine nuke program; the enrichment process generally requires a large amount of space and energy, and things which can often be detected. Plutonium requires running a nuclear reactor — something we should not miss.

But difficult is not impossible, and North Korea developed their atomic weapons right under our noses.http://www.isis-online.org/publications/dprk/currentandfutureweaponsstocks.html This from a nation under intense scrutiny and with extremely limited resources. Of course, the Chinese likely assisted them in their quest, but they still managed to catch the intelligence community by complete surprise. It should be pointed out that they have been partnering with Iran, and had been assisting the Syrians to build a reactor for plutonium production. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=23202

The conclusions of the latest NIE not only contradict their own report from '05, but disagree with aspects of this Congressional Research Services report from September of `06. http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:32uqnHf_XOAJ:fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RS21592.pdf+Iranian+nuclear+enrichment+program&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us&ie=UTF-8

Here is a list of Iranian enrichment sites. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RS22531.pdf

Iran has had a nuclear program since before the Revolution, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, coupled with the proliferation of nuclear technology, has made it much easier to advance these programs. Why do our intelligence people think it will take six years or more for Iran to develop a nuclear device, when the United States was able to do from scratch in just four, using Second World War technology? They have a clandestine network assisting them. They have all the blueprints and schematics necessary. They have merely to acquire enough fissile material, and they may well have that supplied to them. Granted, their centrifuge technology may require more time to complete, but where there's a will there's a way. This report takes the Iranians at their word, something extraordinarily foolish in such a dangerous world. I wouldn't be surprised if they already have a bomb; they won't test it until they have more than one. Despite what the culprits responsible for this report (Donald Kerr, Van Vann Diepen, etc.) may believe, closing an official office hardly means shutting down the entire operation. As long as Iran continues to enrich uranium, they continue to have a nuclear program.

The thought occurs to me that perhaps this is some sort of ruse; we may be preparing some sort of action and want to catch the Iranians by surprise? It would be a very sound strategy, but President Bush simply does not operate in such a devious realm, and the political fallout would be very damaging if the public were not prepared.

No, it seems far more likely that the loose cannons in the CIA and at State have taken it upon themselves to undermine the President and our national policy. They have effectively removed the stick from our diplomatic position, and this will allow Iran to openly flaunt what they are doing, without fear of our response.

The idea that it will take Iran considerably longer to COMPLETE their program than it took America to develop one from scratch with inferior technology is ludicrous. A casual glance at history should tell us otherwise.

The clock is ticking, and time may be shorter than we think.
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I've got no String to Hold me Down

2012-01-25T15:54:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

A quick personal note for readers.

As most of you know, I suffered heart failure back in September and have been forced to lug around a portable defibrilator. I have been on a horrible diet for diabetic cardiac patients, with no salt, not processed meats, no processed foods, no sugar, low starch, restricted fluid intake, and absolutely no taste. I have been moved to insulin, which I take twice a day, as well as a drug called corvedilol, which makes me dizzy and weak. It's been a hard three months.

I've been quite dilligent about doing what I am supposed to do, and all praise belongs to my saintly wife who has devoted her life to keeping me above ground. (My sister-in-law refers to her as Nurse Ratchet, or the Food Nazi.) I had an echocardiogram on Monday.

Good news! My ejection fraction has risen from 25% to 45%, a major increase! I am no longer in danger of Sudden Death Syndrome (a wonderful party favor of my weak heart) and so was able to unplug myself from the chain I forged in life (whenever I wore the accursed thing I felt like the ghost of Jacob Marley) and return to , well, life!

The Lifevest is a wonder; a vest that resembles a gun vest but is actually more like a brazziere (a cardiozziere?) with heart monitors on wrap-around arms and front and back "treatment pads" which are electro-shock paddles. The unit itself is like an old-fashioned camera, about five pounds and can be worn on the belt (theoretically). It transmits a signal to the company, who are always recording what is happening with the patient's ticker. If the heart stops a siren goes off, and the patient has to press a button or he will be defibrilated. Mine went off several times during my tenancy (it's a rented machine) although I was never defibrilated. I suspect I had a missed beat.

The gadget is hideously expensive, and the insurance company doesn't like to pay for it (they are happy to pay for a permanent pacemaker/defibrilator which it turns out I didn't need). I am in a second appeal to the denial of benefits on the gadget now. (It costs $3300 per month.) If they won't pay I suppose I'll be able to make a deal with the company. They have been excellent to deal with, I might add.

But OH! how I longed to be free of that gadget! It's tight, and has to be worn 24/7. When you try to turn over in your sleep you have to raise up first, or you will pull the contacts lose and get a gong sound that will wake you. Whenever you move you have to think about the unit. Going to the bathroom means picking up the thing and carrying it. Taking my insulin was a chore; I had to set the unit down, then rotate my body to perform the small tasks to get the syringe ready and give myself the shot. While it may not seem like a big deal, it's much like the Chinese water torture; after a while it drives you mad.

I would leave it off for an hour in the mornings; I just couldn't stand using it.

But now I'm free! To quote Pinoccio:

"I've got no strings to hold me down, to make me laugh, to make me frown, I had strings, but now I'm free, there are no strings on me!"

I'm not out of the woods yet; my heart is still below normal strength, and the recovery is fragile. I'm still stuck with the horrible diet, and will have to take the corvedilol for the rest of my life. Hopefully my body will eventually get used to it. It makes me dizzy.

But the worst appears to be over. I suspect I'll be heading back to the Ozark Hilton in the reasonably near future, and can at least expect to live through the visit!

I'll keep everyone posted.

Does Obama Want to Lose? Yes!

2012-01-25T15:28:00.001-08:00

By Alan Caruba

It seems like a bizarre notion, but does Barack Obama want to lose the election in November?

I think he does!

One is struck by the way Obama has visibly aged in the job. He may well have grown weary being POTUS.

By any rational standard, one would say he wants a second term, but Obama has always operated in a fantasy world where mere words are supposed to translate into reality. And he has repeatedly talked about being a one-term president.

He is, after all, his own invention; the author of two memoirs of a life that had little achievement to point to other than getting elected first to the Illinois legislature and then to the Senate where he lingered a bare two years before running for president.

I raise the question because Obama seems to be deliberately irritating the very people who are supposed to be his “base”; the hard core liberals, the Hollywood crowd, youth, and unions, among others. His partisanship has put Congress into total gridlock.

When members of the Occupy movement showed up in Washington, D.C., one of them threw a smoke bomb onto the White House lawn. Others who have been camped out in a park there are likely to be tossed out if for no other reason than the place is overrun with rats and has become a public health hazard.

The decision to stop the Keystone pipeline is a deliberate offense to the unions that have contributed millions to his campaign. Why? It pleased the environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. Americans, however, understand the pipeline represented both jobs and oil, two things they deem worth having.

Then there are all the vacations Obama and his family takes. They have one thing in common. They are ostentatiously expensive. Obama or Michelle always seem to be going on vacation or returning from one. The characterization may be unfair, but perception is everything.

Americans are very keen on their military and, of all the government programs Obama could have chosen to trim, he’s had the knives out for the Pentagon since he took office. While a war-weary public was likely pleased when he withdrew troops from Iraq (neither Bush, nor Obama had a choice as the Iraqis made it clear they wanted U.S. troops out), the fact remains that the main news out of Iraq these days are bombings as the Sunni versus Shiite conflict has returned. Afghanistan remains a millstone.

Even in the face of a clear threat, it is unlikely that Obama would respond militarily between now and Election Day. The most likely scenario, however, would be an Israeli decision to strike at Iran before it becomes a full-fledged nuclear threat. It must be said, however, that Obama and other NATO nations have positioned some military assets in the Persian Gulf, but would he pull the trigger? It’s doubtful.

The most obvious problem Obama faces is unemployment. It’s variously set at anywhere from 11% to 20% depending on the part of the nation you’re discussing. It still is far too high everywhere and he gives every impression of being, if not indifferent to it, at least in no hurry to address it. Most certainly none of his programs have reduced it. His alleged “stimulus” was little more than a political slush fund that added billions to the national debt and failed.

Every President is subject to “events” and the likely default of Greece and financial troubles of several European nations are likely to impact the national election as Americans try to sort out what effect it will have here. Obama has already presided over the first downgrade of America’s debt rating and we shall surely be reminded of that in the months ahead.

The other event will be the Supreme Court hearing of the case against Obamacare in March. They may not issue a decision right away or they might issue one just before November 6th.

There are two lines of thought about the forthcoming national election. Past Presidents were relieved to leave office despite its power and prestige. (1) Obama may not like being President and (2) he has concluded that he will be defeated. He gives the impression of not caring about public opinion anymore.

The only people publicly defending him seem to have Attention Deficit Disorder. Either they haven’t paid attention to what a disaster his term has been thus far or they just don’t think it’s his fault.

I think he will go through the motions, but I also think a majority of voters no longer believe a word he says anymore.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Obama Lies about Domestic Energy Plans

2012-01-25T05:24:00.001-08:00

TIMOTHY Birdnow

In what can only be termed a breathtaking display of hypocrisy, Barack Obama promised to promote shale gas and oil production in the U.S.
http://www.thegwpf.org/international-news/4829-obama-pushes-shale-gas-a-oil-drilling-to-create-600000-us-jobs.html

“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” Obama said in his State of the Union speech last night.

Why is this a breathtaking act of hypocrisy? It was Obama who shut down Gulf drilling. It was Obama who killed the Keystone pipeline (which could have been used to transport AMERICAN oil as well). It was the Obama Administration that recently restricted the mining of uranium. It was the Obama people who have locked up useful coal deposits in government "parks" and that has made operating coal-fired electric plants prohibitively expensive. It was the Obama EPA that issued a report falsely claiming that fracking chemicals were polluting groundwater http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2011/12/14/Tainted-EPA-Report-on-Fracking-Blasted-by-Gas-Co.aspx and has done it's best to block the practice. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/energy-intelligence/2011/12/01/fracking-key-to-the-energy-revolution-if-epa-gets-out-of-the-way

It was Barack Hussein Obama who, when asked about the high price of gasoline (at over 4 bucks a gallon) during his election campaign said he was glad for high gas prices, but that he wished they would have risen more slowly. The man is a committed Green, and does not want Americans to have access to cheap energy.

His statement - after having killed the Keystone XL pipeline and the accompanying 20,000 American jobs - is the most cynical of lies, purely a campaign promise that it would be easy to renege on after the election. The man is shameless and despicable.

But some Americans will doubtlessly believe it, just as they believed his "green jobs" promise four years ago.

This Administration is hostile to energy. It hates every aspect of the modern industrial economy, from the first pinprick in the earth to the final usage in cars and air conditioners and automation. It hates oil companies, oil refineries, gas stations. It hates automobiles and the Americans who drive them (rather than ride public transportation like good little serfs). It hates these things because America pioneered much of this and gives Americans their lavish lifestyle. Leftists hate comfortable lifestyles - except for themselves. They retain a hangover from the old Puritan view that life is supposed to be hard and austere, and they want that for their fellows (while exempting themselves) as a way to create a virtuous populace. They snear at the American, fat and happy with his gas guzzling SUV, driving off to his gun show then going out to dinner at some meat packing plant-sized restaurant, guzzling beer and enormous chunks of meat in air-conditioned comfort. They hold this in complete contempt. (Of course, their prius takes them to a sushi bar where they smack their lips over raw fish and Kobi beef and guzzling saki, after having attended a lecture on the evils of capitalism, then they go home to their 5000 square foot homes using as much energy as a small city, but they are entitled because they CARE so much...) How dare America live well when there are starving people in Africa! It is our duty to make other Americans sacrifice for those poor wretches!

And it's about control; a rich populace, mobile, armed, is a danger to the ultimate plans and ambitions of Liberals. They can't put the public under their thumbs if they have no leverege over them. They need the public to be dependent on them, dependent on them to eat, drink, heat their homes, move about. Government cannot rule (and that is what they want, rule and not govern) if it cannot control, and it cannot control those who have what they need.

What a free people need most is energy. With energy they have no need of government except as a servant.

So when a man like BHO says he wants more energy in this country, look rather at his actions, and not his words. Every half bright liberal knows that green energy is not going to work on any scale; they advocate it precisely for that reason. It is a way to equalize America, to cut the fat, beer guzzling hicks down to size. If Obama wanted more energy he would not have followed any of the policies he has followed. He is a liar!

The Road Warrior Coming to Egypt

2012-01-24T14:53:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Spengler predicts economic collapse in Egypt in a piece in Asia Times Online.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NA24Ak02.html

From the article:

"Egypt faces a disaster of biblical proportions, and the world will do nothing about it. Officially, Egypt's foreign exchange reserves fell by half during 2011, including a $2.4 billion decline during December - from $36 billion to $18 billion, or about four months of imports.

But the situation almost certainly is worse than that. More than $4 billion left the country during December, estimates Royal Bank of Scotland economist Raza Agha, noting that the December drop in reserves was cushioned by a $1 billion loan from the Egyptian army and a $1 billion sale of dollar-denominated treasury bills.

The rush out of the Egyptian pound is so rapid that Egyptian investors refuse to hold debt in their own national currency, even at a 16% yield. After Islamist parties won more three-quarters of the seats in recent parliamentary elections - 47% for the Muslim Brotherhood and 25% for the even more extreme al-Nour Party - the business elite that prospered under military rule is counting the days before exile.

The first reports of actual hunger in provincial Egyptian towns, meanwhile, are starting to trickle in through Arab-language press and blog reports. A shortage of gasoline accompanied by long queues at filling stations and panic buying was widely reported last week.

In some towns, for example Luxor in Upper Egypt, the disappearance of diesel fuel shut down bakeries, exacerbating the spot shortages of bread."

End excerpt.

Food riots seem likely to come soon. The Obama Administration, completely oblivious to the forces they were unleashing, has handed Egypt to the Islamists, and has guaranteed the collapse of the Egyptian economy at the same time. Egypt is a critical nation in the region, and should Egypt topple the whole Middle Eastern economy is likely to go with it - and Greece will doubtlessly follow. Then the dominoes will fall one after another, inexorably.

We appear to be perched on the precipice of a worldwide catastrophe, and the man in the most critical position is too busy playing golf and fighting Global Warming to be bothered.

Hat tip: Ron De Haan

What OWS Really Thinks of the 99 Percent

2012-01-24T14:43:00.000-08:00

Jack Kemp

The mainstream media was very upset about a few Marines urinating on the bodies of dead out of uniform terrorists who have been trying to kill them in a war. This story was all over many websites. Even Hillary Clinton denounced the Marines who did this. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-01/13/c_131357085.htm At the same time, Obama union ally the SEIU supports Occupy Wall Street. http://biggovernment.com/mvadum/2011/10/20/stephen-lerner-seiu-neo-communist-union-boss-uses-ows-to-spread-fear-economic-mayhem/ But when OWS members urinated on a cross in a Brooklyn church that gave them sanctuary, as well as stole from a Manhattan church, the mainstream media and New York local Democrats remain silent on the issue reported in a major newspaper.

The NY Post reported http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/god_awful_ows_mob_VqPjFDW0n234NhA9hxsxnL that Occupy Wall Streeters will no longer allowed to find sanctuary at the West Park Presbyterian Church, on West 86th Street in Manhattan – unless they return part of baptismal font that was stolen and make amends for their damage. The Church has given them two weeks to leave. West Park Presbyterian, with both services in English and Spanish http://westparkchurch.org/worshipsp.htm listed on their website, found a bronze basin and lid to a baptismal font gone. Although the basin was later found, the lid is still missing. The Post also reported an unusual expression of outrage for a churchman – but not for a New Yorker – when the Rev. Bob Brashear told the Occupiers that the vandalism “was like pissing on the 99 percent.”

The Post also reports more outrageous acts by the “people’s movement,” OWS:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/god_awful_ows_mob_VqPjFDW0n234NhA9hxsxnL

BEGIN QUOTE

The artifact vanished just three weeks after a $2,400 Apple MacBook vanished from Brashear’s office.

SECTION OMITTED

In Brooklyn, at another church housing OWS protesters, an occupier urinated on a cross, according to Rabbi Chaim Gruber, who has angrily abandoned the OWS movement.

In a letter last week to OWS obtained by The Post, the rabbi fumed, “The Park Slope church housing occupiers was desecrated when an occupier peed inside the building and the pee came into contact with a cross.”

END QUOTE

These are the same Euro Utopians, “building a better world,” who took over a house in Brooklyn, raped a woman in Philadelphia http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/11/woman-raped-at-occupy-philadelphia/ and allegedly raped a man in New York, http://www.theblaze.com/stories/there%E2%80%99s-sexual-assault-going-on-alleged-protester-details-deaf-mans-rape-at-ows/ nurtured conditions for a tuberculosis outbreak at their encampment in Atlanta – and tried to shut down all ports on the West Coast of the United States while having some success in shutting down Oakland’s port. http://occupyoakland.org/2011/10/blockade-port-of-oakland-during-nov-2-general-strike/

The OWS disrespect for communities has gotten so bad that even earlier supporter and New York City Councilman Charles Barron (D) has turned against them http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/klyn_pol_supporter_flip_flops_on_Pt6THF9XMmgk89vVXlPiOO because of the OWS house occupation and related reasons.

I recall seeing Charles Barron in person at the New York City Council hearing in February, 2011 on the issue of whether to allow Walmart to open a store in Brooklyn. As Wikipedia documented, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Barron#Protest_against_Walmart

BEGIN QUOTE
Barron called Walmart a "roving plantation" and said "There are no slaves in East New York. We will not be your slave workers.”
END QUOTE

I believe Newt Gingrich addressed Mr. Barron’s concerns about entry level jobs that teach skills to teenagers when he replied to Juan Williams, telling of his (Newt’s) daughter working as a church janitor as a teen. And at that City Council hearing, I was surprised that Barron didn’t object to black teens working at McDonald’s, where many a black teen gets their first opportunity and job training – and pocket money. I guess attacking McDonald’s would be way too unpopular a remark for him to make about the beloved “Mickey D’s.”

Charles Barron is clearly a liberal, as are the two clergymen quoted above - but even they have to draw the line somewhere – between legitimate protest and nihilistic anarchy and license which destroys a community. They are finding out that when Lenin (borrowing from Robespierre in the French Revolution) said you have to be willing to break a few eggs in order to make an omelet, that often in a political movement one gets more broken eggs at one’s feet than nourishment. And the mess from the “broken eggs” flows into their communities, not just staying as clean illustration on the pages of some book of political sayings one can pass along to one’s followers.

The truth about repealing Obamacare

2012-01-24T14:41:00.001-08:00

Jack Kemp forwards this from Tea Party Nation:

http://www.teapartynation.com/forum/topic/show?id=3355873%3ATopic%3A1804496&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_topic

The truth about repealing Obamacare
Posted by Judson Phillips on January 24, 2012 at 10:22am

Holy Cow!

It is a good news, bad news scenario for liberal Mitt Romney. One of his top advisors comes out and says that Romney (nor any other Republican) will not repeal Obamacare!

If it were not the day of the State of the Union speech, this story would probably gain some traction.

From the Hill:

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/politics-elections/206077-romney-adviser-norm-coleman-predicts-republican-president-wont-repeal-health-law

Mitt Romney adviser Norm Coleman, a former senator from Minnesota, predicted in a recent television interview that the GOP won't repeal the Democrats' healthcare reform law even if a Republican candidate defeats President Obama this November.
"You will not repeal the act in its entirety, but you will see major changes, particularly if there is a Republican president," Coleman told BioCentury This Week television on Sunday. "You can't whole cloth throw it out. But you can substantially change what's been done."
Coleman's remarks are remarkable because every Republican candidate - including Romney - has vowed to make repealing the law a priority. Coleman is also the chairman of the American Action Network, which has urged the courts to strike down the law's individual mandate and its Medicaid expansion.

Romney's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

No kidding they were not responding. They were busy telling Norm Coleman to shut the hell up!

The truth of what Norm Coleman said cannot be ignored. Mitt Romney is not going to repeal Obamacare. He will work to have some of the more egreigious parts of it repealed or amended but he will not repeal it.

This is the truth about the Republican establishment and why we must defeat them. The Republican establishment does not want to reduce government or change the way things are done. They simply want to control big government.

Norm Coleman has told us why we must defeat Romney and make certain a conservative is elected. Mitt Romney and the big government Republican establishment types will not change anything.

If the Congress can fight, we can get the Keystone Pipeline

2012-01-24T04:22:00.000-08:00

Jack Kemp

Red State's Daniel Horowitz proposes a plan that Congressional Republicans who actually believe in fighting for our country's present and future should go to the wall to pass. If the Democrats kill this, they will have, in my opinion, handed the Presidency to the GOP on a silver platter.

Mr. Horowitz writes:
http://www.redstate.com/dhorowitz3/2012/01/23/congressional-republicans-can-and-must-force-obamas-hand-on-keystone-pipeline/

Immediately prior to the congressional recess in December, Congress passed an inefficacious two-month extension of the Social Security tax cut. Additionally, they reauthorized another two months of unprecedented long-term unemployment benefits, along with more spending for Medicare ‘doc fix.’ None of it, including the entitlement spending, was paid for in any meaningful way.

Nevertheless, you might ask, didn’t we get the Keystone pipeline as part of the deal? Well, in reality we got nothing.
SECTION OMITTED

It is not too late to force Obama’s hand on the pipeline. According to the latest CRS legal analysis, http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/205579-report-congress-can-require-keystone-pipeline-approval
“[I]f Congress chose to assert its authority in the area of border crossing facilities, this would likely be considered within its Constitutionally enumerated authority to regulate foreign commerce.”

SECTION OMITTED
Congress’s power over foreign commerce is plainly enumerated by the Constitution, suggesting that its authority in this field is preeminent.”

In other words, Congress has plenary power to either absolutely force Obama to issue the permit or to issue it themselves.

The House should immediately pass Keystone legislation, either in a standalone bill or as part of other “must-pass” legislation. They should ship it off to the Senate and let the 23 Democrats who are up for election stand before their constituents and kill job creation. Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of voters agree.
END OF QUOTE

In other words, the Republicans should act as if they know who returned them to some power in 2010, the Tea Party, and not act like some country club members contemplating whether to get new wall paper for the main dining room or install iPhone phone charging stations in the main hall. There is a lot here at stake, i.e., both the jobs of out of work Americans - and soon to be out of work Congresspeople. When my own district threw out Anthony Weiner's Democrat successor, they weren't looking to continue the policies of Bob Michel and Charles Halleck - and Thurston Howell III - from a half century ago.

The Supermarionation Candidate at Canada Free Press

2012-01-23T14:02:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Mitt Romney - the Supermarionation candidate!
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/44112

Why is Romney sinking, and Gingrich on the rise? I examine the matter at Canada Free Press.

Lies About Icelandic Temperature Trends

2012-01-23T07:02:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Monkey business with temperature data of Iceland by GISS.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/the-icelandic-saga-continues/

From the article:

"Just to recap, we have learnt that GISS temperatures for Iceland and Greenland have been artificially adjusted, with the result that current temperatures appear much warmer than when compared with the warm period during the 1940’s. Temperature data for Reykjavik from the Iceland Met Office confirmed that this adjustment was wholly artificial and resulted in a net warming of about a half a degree centigrade since 1940 and that the actual mean temperatures in the last decade are about a degree less than GISS show."

End Excerpt.

Once again, the Global Warming people have discovered a better way of communicating with the public - just lie about data!

Hat tip; SEPP

American Diocletian; Obama and Energy

2012-01-23T06:49:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

After three years of study http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204468004577168912332364268.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h President Obama has determined that there has not been enough time to thoroughly research the Keystone XL pipeline - and he has killed the deal. What is interesting about this is that the President did not afford Congress as much as one year to study the government takeover of healthcare in the U.s. (which hijacked one seventh of the U.S. economy), demanding immediate passage and prompting then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to say of the gargantuan bill "we'll have to pass it to see what's in it." Why didn't Mr. Obama employ the same standards to Keystone?

Keystone would have brought oil from Canadian tar sands to the U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast. Oil pipelines are very well-established technologies, much safer than rail for transporting large amounts. Keystone would have been funded entirely by private concerns, and would have guaranteed a steady flow of oil to the U.S. The Canadians are now considering a pipeline to the British Columbia coast to sell the oil to the Chinese instead.

President Obama's own jobs council (handpicked by the President himself) has advocated pipelines and alternative oil sources, suggesting he "policies that facilitate the safe, thoughtful and timely development of pipeline, transmission and distribution projects," and warning that a failure to do so
"would stall the engine that could become a prime driver of U.S. jobs and growth in the decades ahead."

But the pipeline could move more than just Canadian oil; North Dakota has become a major oil producer, and at present that oil can only be moved by railroad. The Canadian pipeline would give ND a way to move that oil to the Gulf refineries cheaply and easily. Interestingly enough, one of the big rail companies that profit from the present arrangement is BNSF, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, presided over by none other than Warren Buffet, a major advisor and contributor to Barack Hussein Obama.

The Trans-Alaska pipeline was built in just over three years, and had Obama authorized Keystone oil would be flowing by now. Certainly such a pipeline would be easier to build in the developed portions of the country.

The President through Interior Secretary Ken Salazaar, has also banned mining for uranium on over a million acres of federally-owned land in Arizona.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204124204577154332224006536.html?mod=ITP_opinion_2

Now, nuclear produces no greenhouse gases, and is completely safe in newer reactors. This President kills the Keystone pipeline and bans uranium mining. He closed down offshore drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and refused to reopen it even in the face of a court order, and when he finally did reopen it he had saw to it that a morass of paperwork slowed the restarting of drilling. As a result, many of the oil rigs moved to South America where they are making large sums of money for Brazil's Petrobras, in which his heavy contributor George Soros owns a large stake. He wants to put over 32 coal fired electric plants out of business with new draconian regulations, shutting down 8% of all U.S. generating capabilities. http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/01/up-next-obamas-new-energy-regulations-will-put-32-coal-plants-out-of-business/

Energy usage is a measure of wealth; the U.S. uses more energy per person than any other country on Earth, and the Left has hated America for it. President Obama wants to equalize the world's wealth, return the wealth America has "stolen" to it's "rightful owners" by hogtie via regulation. I would argue that Obama wants more than just to equalize things, to offer fairness. I assert the man wants to punish America, make America suffer. I am of the opinion that Barack Obama has an actual hatred for America, passed to him by his mother, his neighbor the Marxist poet Frank Marshall Davis, by his friends Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, by Jeremiah Wright. I would argue his Islamic experiences in Indonesia taught him that America is evil, and should be brought down. I would suggest that Mr. Obama knows our tenderest spot, our wallets, and is hurting us where we are vulnerable. He would love to get re-elected so as to continue his mischief, but wants even more to permanently damage the country.

In another time he would have long since been impeached. He has committed several flagrant violations of the law, including refusing to enforce voter discrimination laws, using U.S. funds to promote abortion overseas, refusing to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, disobeying a court order to restart Gulf drilling, giving firearms to Mexican drug lords to sew chaos and thus establish the need for gun control in the U.S., moving control of the Census Bureau directly to the White House, attempting to seize control of the internet in violation of a court order, etc.

In fact, there are no less than 50 potential impeachment counts that could be made against the current occupant of Pennsylvania Avenue. http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/26650

The expectations were high for Obama, America's first "black President" (although he has a white mother and likely his father was half arab making him one quarter black) and Congress is terrified of impeaching him, making it appear they are a lynch mob of rednecks from rural Alabama. Also, the GOP impeached the last "black President" who was also the last Democrat in office, and the old Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome comes into play; they just can't impeach without looking ridiculous. So Obama continues his destructive rampage, much like one of the tripods from Wells' novel War of the Worlds. I doubt we can recover from the damage he has already done, and should he be re-elected (and expect massive vote fraud and manipulation in the next election) America will be crossing that fine line that the Romans unwittingly crossed in 476 a.d. The Roman people did not understand that Rome had fallen; all seemed as it had been. But historians date that to the elevation of the German Odoacer to the throne, ending the Latin line. It was not one dramatic moment. Future historians will date the fall of the American empire in much the same way; probably with the election of Barack Obama, or with his re-election. Even if Obama leaves office the damage he has done may be irreversible; we cannot pay down the gargantuan debt he has accumulated in his tenure of office.

American power stemmed not from America's military might or from her control of resources but from her resourcefullness in utilizing what was given to her. Jules Verne observed that Americans were born engineers; put an American in a room with some cogs and springs and whatnot and leave him for ten minutes and when you return you would find he had assembled some contraption, according to Verne (in From the Earth to the Moon). Americans could take sub-par land and make it bloom. Where the Spanish could never settle Texas in any meaningful way, and neither could Mexico, the Americans made it into one of our greatest states. The land itself is poor, the harbors treacherous and silty, the aboriginal peoples were hostile, the water bad. But Americans made it bloom through their resourceful character, and energy was no small part of the equation. This has always been the case; as pioneers expanded Westward they invented new ways of living, new tools, new ideas. No wood for fences? Make them out of wire. Add sharp little barbs, since wire fences won't keep your cattle from pushing through otherwise. No water for your crops? Build a dam, drill a well. No access to market? Build a railroad. During the War of 1812 the American land forces were an embarassment (despite fighting on home territory) but the Navy embarassed the British, who had the best naval force in the world at that time. Why? Because America had developed new and better ships, more manueverable and capable, which did much damage both in the Great Lakes and off the coast in the Atlantic.

And, of course, America pioneered the use of electricity. Edison's light bulb was a vast improvement over the old carbon arc electic lights, and a huge improvement over any other lighting system (such as the kerosene lamp). The Aladdin lamp, a kerosene lamp using a rare-earth mantle to produce much more light, came out about the same time as the Edison light bulb. They are now largely novelties. And while telegraphs were under development for a long time before Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail, it was their version of the machine that revolutionized long-range communications. http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Electrical_telegraph and it was an American - Cyrus West Field - who hatched up the then-hairbrained scheme of running a telegraph line clear across the Atlantic Ocean.

Alexander Graham Bell was, of course, the inventor of the telephone.

Suffice it to say that America's genius lay in her ability to make due with what she has. And America is virtually swimming in oil, gas, and coal. Energy is the key to American greatness and always has been. We have found ways to harness rivers, to use coal-fired steam engines, to build internal combustion machines.

What Obama is doing by attacking our energy usage is nothing short of attacking the roots of American greatness. American technical aptitude stems from America's freedoms; only a free people can experiment, can develop, can create. The two go hand in hand. Cut America off from energy and America withers. I fear that Barack Obama may understand this better than most, and I suspect he wants to see some withering, a cutting down to size.

Serfdom was not born during the Middle Ages; it was born during the late Roman times. The Emperor Diocletian, concerned that the Empire was losing her farmers and artisans, issued edicts forcing the workers to stay on their properties and in their occupations. If your father was a farmer you had to be one. The ebb of imperial authority only advanced that trend, because the farmers and artisans required protection from local wealthy citizens once the protections of the Roman legion were gone, and they had only one way to pay the local rich guy. As a result, fealty became a way of life, and the poorer farmers and artisans became bound to their land or their blacksmith shops or their pottery wheels. America seems to be heading in that same direction; we are not bound to farms or smithys, but to our ethnic and social groups, our political castes. Government is gobbling up the sources of our freedoms, taking away our ability to move, to communicate, to innovate. Obama, by stealing our energy supply, is making us serfs to the government, which provides for us the things that we would provide ourselves if allowed to do so. By economic deprivation we are forced to go hat-in-hand to Uncle Sam, who caused the deprivation to begin with by tying up the resources needed to create.

Obama is the modern Diocletian.

The EU's complicity in the Costa Concordia sinking

2012-01-23T04:56:00.001-08:00

Jack Kemp

The European Union had been warned years ago. Here are the "Money Quotes" from the (British) Telegraph article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/9030330/The-EU-ignored-years-of-expert-warnings-on-cruise-ship-safety.html

The problem repeatedly addressed by Professor Vassalos and his team is what happens to cruise liners when they are holed below the waterline. Because of the network of bulkheads now customary in such “mega ships”, even small amounts of water which break in may be forced to the ship’s opposite side, causing it quickly to capsize.

“As the hull is breached,” one of their papers says, “water may rush through various compartments, substantially reducing stability even when the floodwater amount is small. As a result the ship could heel to large angles – letting water into the upper decks that spreads rapidly through these spaces and may lead to rapid capsize.” Hence what happened to the Costa Concordia, which was holed on the port side but after grounding, which forced water across the ship, then listed dramatically to starboard.

Prof Vassalos and his colleagues have been warning of this with increasing urgency for eight years. As they put it in a paper published in 2007 by the Royal Institution of Naval Architects, “the regulatory system is stretched to breaking point”. But even though their researches were part-funded by the EU, it took no notice of their findings. In 2009, for instance, it issued a new directive adding little to one from 1998 before this fatal design flaw had come to light.

Workers can't unite without the XL Pipe

2012-01-23T04:49:00.001-08:00

Jack Kemp

In an article entitled "Why Obama Turned Down the Keystone XL Pipeline," Ron Radosh explains to befuddled Americans (myself included) what made Obama agree to the foolish idea of refusing to create thousands of union jobs and have more energy in the country. Even as a political news junkie, I could not fully understand Obama's (and his supporters') thinking until former leftist Radosh explained the trendy ideas and "logic" of Obama's political calculation in making this decision. It fits perfectly with the line I wrote in 2008: Obama seems to be running not for President of the U.S., but of the Harvard Faculty Lounge.

Here are Radosh's concluding remarks:
http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2012/01/19/why-obama-turned-down-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/2/

BEGIN QUOTE

So if the unions supported the pipeline, as they did, why are they so silent now that the president has turned against a proposal they backed? The answer is that I suspect a private deal was made last week: The unions would downgrade their disappointment at the veto of Keystone XL, in return for the president unconstitutionally using his powers to override the Constitution and put in pro-labor recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the same board that tried to penalize Boeing for wanting to move its new facility to South Carolina from the state of Washington.

For the unions, a pro-left-wing NLRB is more important for Big Labor to attain all of its goals even if it hurts the spread of corporations to a more hospitable climate where new jobs would be created. This kind of clout as well as promises to support other labor demands that Congress might not sanction but which the president would try to implement by executive fiat are more important in their judgment than having the pipeline built at this moment.

And, in the process, Obama would try to energize the left-wing base in Hollywood and the campuses, which care little about the needs of the working-class and the unions, but respond with passion to the clarion calls of Al Gore, Robert Redford, and Laurie David.
END OF QUOTE

Notice Mr. Radosh refers here to Big Labor as a movement, a leadership force. The considerations of the many working people - minorities included, as per Federal law and common practice - can go pound sand, as far as Obama and the Union bosses are concerned.

The situation recalls an imaginary discussion between a rank-and-file worker and a Union Boss.

Worker: We can't get that work on the XL Pipeline? I'm broke and I don't know what I'm gonna do.

Union Boss: Well, you can go on Welfare, if it comes to that.

Worker: I've never been on Welfare in my life and it is demeaning.

Union Boss: Look, it's not so bad. Heck, even if you get desperate and lose your home, there's still some hope of good news.

Worker: Yeah? Whaddaya mean by that?

Union Boss: If you get caught breaking the locks and sneaking into your old house and then get sent to jail, your orange jumpsuit will have a union label!

Worker: Thanks a lot. You just sold me. I'm voting for the Republicans.

Destroying America by Denying Access to Energy

2012-01-22T05:16:00.001-08:00

By Alan Caruba

It is the crime of the century that America, home to some of the world’s greatest reserves of coal, natural gas and oil, is being deliberately destroyed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior as they do everything in their power to restrict access and drive energy producers out of business.

It is common sense that a nation that cannot produce sufficient electricity to turn on its lights and power its manufacturing sector will be destroyed if current Obama administration regulations and actions continue. Our vital transportation sector and all others that utilize petroleum-based products will suffer, too.

While President Obama babbles about millionaires and billionaires, everyone will be impoverished by the loss of jobs and revenue our energy sector produces now and can produce in the future.

This isn’t an “energy policy.” It’s a “no-energy policy” and it is a guarantee of economic disaster.

Obama’s decision to reject a permit for Canada’s XL Keystone pipeline is just one example. It is a job-killer and a revenue-killer. There are thousands of pipelines serving America’s energy needs and the XL Keystone pipeline would ensure that Canada’s own vast energy reserves would flow to America. It is one of our key trade partners and Obama has slapped it in the face.

In early January, Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior, announced a new 20-year, million-acre ban on uranium mining for federal lands in Arizona, despite the fact that these lands hold the highest-grade of known uranium deposits in the United States. It is an outrage that a new GOP-Congress will have to overturn if the nation is to be assured of sufficient uranium to power its nuclear plants and for weapons development. If the ban remains, these uranium resources would be inaccessible until 2023!

Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research said that Salazar’s announcement “further compounds a man-made energy crisis that has been planned and executed in Washington, D.C.”

At the same time we are learning of enormous natural gas discoveries that can reduce our energy bills and turn sleeping little towns into boomtowns, environmental organizations have launched a vast propaganda campaign against “fracking”, a technology that has been safely used for more than fifty years. Their claims about dangers to the nation’s supply of fresh water are baseless. Their claims that fracking has caused earthquakes in Ohio are absurd.

Need it be said that the Environmental Protection Agency has turned its eyes on fracking and is working on a report due later this year that will likely call for harsh crackdowns on its use and more regulations to throttle the expansion of natural gas extraction?

The EPA has just released a report of those power plants that top the list of its regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. There is no basis in science to justify the reduction of CO2. Indeed, since it is a gas on which all vegetation depends, much as oxygen is vital to all animal life, reducing it would impair great crop yields and healthier forests.

These regulations are based on the global warming hoax that blamed CO2 for warming the earth. That is utterly false. The Earth is currently in a perfectly natural cooling cycle and the climate of the Earth is almost entirely based on the Sun—solar radiation—along with the actions of oceans, clouds, and even volcanic activity that spews tons of particulates into the atmosphere.

Coal-fired power plants account for fifty percent of all the electricity generated in the United States. Fifty percent! And yet the EPA is determined to shut down dozens of them providing that vital factor in the lives of all Americans and the economy, nor does this take into account the billions that energy producers have spent to upgrade their technology to reduce emissions.

The Obama administration fuel economy agenda, a call for 54.5 miles per gallon ignores simple physics. There is a finite amount of energy a gallon of gas can generate. If you dilute it with ethanol as is currently required, you get even less mileage. The administration is trying to circumvent Congress by issuing standards based on regulating “greenhouse gas emissions”, but there is no need for this. It is a false argument. The Center for Automotive Research says that the proposed new standards would cause the retail price of average motor vehicles to increase by more than $11,000.

Americans and the nation’s future are being victimized by Obama administration policies. The 18th annual Index of Economic Freedom, was released on January 12th by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, measures the many factors that contribute to the economic health of a nation—things like property rights, regulatory efficiency, open markets, free trade and labor policies.

Economic freedom is declining worldwide as governments try to spend their way out of the global recession. The United States fell to 10th place. In 2009 it ranked 6th, in 2010 it was 8th, and in 2011, it was 9th.

We are witnessing the deliberate murder of a superpower.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Turned into a Newt

2012-01-21T06:12:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

"She turned me into a Newt"

"Into a NEWT?"

"Well, I got better..."

http://spectator.org/blog/2012/01/20/bill-clinton-of-the-right-minu

Gingrich is the Bill Clinton of the GOP, according to Qinn Hillyar at TAS.

Democrats Propose Draconian Windfall Profits Oil Tax

2012-01-21T05:27:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Democrats attempt to seize oil profits. According to The Hill:

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/205085-dems-propose-reasonable-profits-board-to-regulate-oil-company-profits

"Six House Democrats, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), want to set up a "Reasonable Profits Board" to control gas profits.

The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a "windfall profit tax" as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what constitutes a reasonable profit.

The Gas Price Spike Act, H.R. 3784, would apply a windfall tax on the sale of oil and gas that ranges from 50 percent to 100 percent on all surplus earnings exceeding "a reasonable profit." It would set up a Reasonable Profits Board made up of three presidential nominees that will serve three-year terms. Unlike other bills setting up advisory boards, the Reasonable Profits Board would not be made up of any nominees from Congress."

End excerpt.

But who is the biggest oil profiteer? Big Government, that's who.

In 2010 Exxon-Mobile alone paid $9.8 BILLION dollars to the Federal treasury, and close to $59 billion over the last five years. That is just one oil company. http://www.exxonmobilperspectives.com/2011/04/27/gas-prices-and-industry-earnings-a-few-things-to-think-about/

And while the taxes on gasoline AT THE PUMP amount to about 66 cents http://www.9wsyr.com/news/local/story/What-percentage-of-gas-prices-go-to-taxes/o7X4rEAbxk2X4FIbWF2Xkw.cspx per gallon (assuming a $4 gas price) the fact is that the taxes on the sale of GASOLINE at the pump is the final step in a series of taxes, starting with exploration, drilling, transporting, refining, and then finally selling. And it is subject to draconian regulations, including "designer" blending to meet EPA standards in different areas.

Exxon-Mobile made less than 8 cents on every dollar of gas sold, so the total profits were 32 cents on $4 gasoline, or about HALF of what the government got!

We need a board to control goverrnment profits, not private business profits.

Part of the reason gas and oil prices are high is because of government regulation and restriction. If free market principles applied we would have cheap energy, as we are only now learning that we are literally swimming in the stuff. But our government, captive to the Gang Green and their environmental lobby, won't let us go get it, and are actually trying to make the cost of doing business MORE expensive for energy companies to drive prices even higher.

What we need is a tax on Congress. Every time Congress raises taxes their own "special use fee" should be raised. When they lower taxes the fee should be dropped. As things stand now, our wonderful protectors in government can cheat private citizens (and a company is nothing more than a collection of private citizens) without personel repercussion. That has to change.

There was a time when a group like this would have been run out of town on a rail; they are advocating socialism. We have become so used to socialists telling us what to do that we don't even find this particularly interesting.

I've got an idea; why don't we tie the profits government reaps to the profits Big Oil reaps? If Exxon-Mobile earns 32 cents per gallon then government can only tax 32 cents per gallon?

The real windfall is on the government side. Strange how they want to take it all.

Firearms Poll

2012-01-21T05:17:00.000-08:00

Dana Mathewson forwards this:

Guess they were not happy with the poll results the first time, so USA today is running another one... Vote now

Attorney General, Eric Holder, has already said this is one of his major issues. He does not believe the 2nd Amendment gives individuals the right to bear arms. This takes literally 2 clicks to complete. Please vote on this gun issue question with USA Today. It will only take a few seconds of your time. Then pass the link on to all the pro- gun folks you know. Hopefully these results will be published later this month. This upcoming year will become critical for gun owners with the Supreme Court's accepting the District of Columbia case against the right for individuals to bear arms.
Here's what you need to do:

First - vote on this one. click on usatoday link below
Second - Send it to other folks and have THEM vote - then we will see if the results get published.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/quickquestion/2007/november/popup5895.htm

It’s time to launch a new era in Africa

2012-01-21T05:13:00.001-08:00

Paul Driessen

My friend and colleague, CORE Uganda director Cyril Boynes, has written another eloquent and passionate appeal for energy and economic development in Africa.

This article explains how some of the natural gas already being developed in many parts of Africa could be harnessed to power electricity generating units – thereby providing electrical power that would modernize homes and businesses, create jobs, improve health and living standards, and “unleash the human spirit, and people’s innovative and entrepreneurial instincts.”

Cyril Boynes, Jr

While on extended leave in New York, I often pondered conditions in this huge city, versus in Uganda and most of Africa. Perhaps most of all, I reflected on electricity and the economic activity, modern living standards and improved health that this amazing technology makes possible. I thought about that as I read articles about climate change “reparations” and other foreign aid, oil and gas discoveries in Africa, and impediments to African electricity and economic development.

Several European and US energy companies recently announced major natural gas discoveries in East Africa, both onshore and offshore. Other companies are using hydraulic fracturing to unlock natural gas from the continent’s shale rock formations.

There is a lot of talk about building LNG (liquefied natural gas) terminals to ship gas overseas. “I’m convinced that in 10 years’ time Tanzania, Mozambique and Kenya will together form a major gas hub for Asian and Far Eastern markets,” Cove Energy CEO John Craven told the Wall Street Journal.

There is a lot of gas in West Africa too, especially in Angola and Nigeria, and companies are often criticized for “flaring” gas – burning it off at the wellhead, instead of using it for something productive. (The same thing happened in the United States, until people figured our how to use this previously unwanted byproduct of oil production to heat homes, generate electricity, and make fertilizers, plastics and chemicals.)

Why should this valuable energy resource be flared? In fact, why should we just talk about sending it to Asia, the Far East and other markets? Why aren’t we talking more about using it right here in Africa?

East African gas could easily be used all over the Great Lakes region to generate electricity for homes and businesses, hospitals and schools, jobs and economic growth – turning dreams into reality. All we’d need to do is provide legal, tax and other incentives to attract investors who could build a few gas-fired generating plants and pipelines to connect them to gas fields.

There would still be plenty of gas for export, but the reliable, affordable electricity would launch an economic boom unlike anything we have ever seen.

That’s what happened in the southeastern United States, when the Tennessee Valley Authority began building hydroelectric dams and other projects. One of America’s poorest regions was transformed into an economic powerhouse. Dams built in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest regions of the USA during the Great Depression did the same thing.

Recognizing the immense value of electricity, South Africa is racing to build the Medupi coal-fired power plant and many other generators and transmission lines. In just one example, when an electrical line finally reached a remote area of the country, two furniture makers were able to install power equipment, hire local workers, sell far more furniture of much higher quality – and help launch a local economic revolution that has enabled families to improve their living standards greatly.

Meanwhile, Ghana is building a 130-MW gas-fired power plant, even though the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation refused to support the $185-million project. Other investors stepped forward, the plant is being built, the country will send some of its abundant natural gas to the plant, and numerous Ghanaians will finally enjoy the blessings of modern living through electricity.

Just imagine what could happen if people all over Africa could have access to affordable electricity, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year!

As Zambian Dambisa Moyo and South African Leon Louw have often said, foreign aid causes more harm than good – whether it is traditional aid or new-fangled “climate reparation” aid. Most of it ends up in just a few hands. Poor families see little or no improvement in their lives. And people have few incentives and little money to make investments, launch businesses or improve their homes and communities.

Foreign aid keeps people alive, but barely. It ties them to international welfare, in perpetual poverty, with little or no chance to become middle class.

Access to electricity changes everything. It puts people in charge of their future. It unleashes the human spirit, and people’s innovative and entrepreneurial instincts. It gives people one of the most important tools they need: affordable, reliable energy for lights, refrigerators, computers and machinery – along with good jobs, so that they can afford electricity, more nutritious food, healthcare and other basics.

Some say putting more carbon dioxide into the air from burning natural gas will affect the climate. However, many scientists say CO2 plays only a minor role in climate change – and Africans already put millions of tons into the air by burning wood, grass and dung, which are far less efficient fuel sources and cannot generate electricity.

The rest of the world – especially Europeans, Americans, Chinese and Indians – are burning enormous amounts of coal and natural gas to generate the electricity that runs their countries. Why shouldn’t Africa? Besides, carbon dioxide makes plants grow better, even in droughts, and companies like General Electric are developing cleaner, more efficient gas turbine technologies that African nations could purchase.

Kenya, Uganda and other African countries would not need extensive gas pipeline systems. They just need to build a few pipelines to carry gas to large generating units that would provide electricity for homes, hospitals, schools, shops, factories and water treatment plants. Miracles would happen.

As my wife, businesswoman and fellow malaria and economic development activist Fiona Kobusingye, has pointed out, “Not having electricity means millions of Africans die every year from lung infections, because they have to cook and heat with open fires; from intestinal diseases caused by spoiled food and unsafe drinking water; from malaria and other diseases that we could prevent or treat if we had proper medical facilities.”

All that would change if our countries had electricity.

The modern world runs on electricity. It’s time for Africa to take its rightful place among the healthy and prosperous nations of the world. Our growing supplies of natural gas could help make that happen.

___________

Cyril Boynes, Jr. is co-chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality – Uganda.

A Tentative Endorsement

2012-01-21T05:08:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

A group of Conservative leaders have coalesced behind Rick Santorum.
http://www.conservativehq.com/article/6358-conservative-leaders-endorse-rick-santorum-president

At this juncture Santorum would be probably be my pick, although I am luke-warm about him. Gingrich would probably be my second choice, followed by Ron Paul, then Romney. I can't say I am thrilled with any of the contenders; this is a holding action year.

The problem with holding actions is that we get creeping socialism. Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. both advanced the socialist state by their policies, just did it more slowly than their Democratic counterparts would have. In some ways, a RINO Presidency is worse than a Democratic one, because we have to support it and defend it despite the fact that it is killing us slowly. And it breaks the power of Conservatives in the process. George W. Bush immodestly proclaimed "I have redefined the Republican Party" and he's right; he purged the old Reagan people from power, promoted "moderate" candidates nationwide, and stripped the right of it's voice. Of course, we moved leftward under Bush; No Child Left Behind, Prescription Drug Benefits, etc. all advanced under his watch.

What we have is the vision of the Fabian Society; creeping socialism rather than revolutionary. Or, as it has been said by friends of Obama, "dropping the radical pose to achieve radical ends". Can anybody imagine that we would have an end to "don't ask, don't tell" and allow open homosexuality in the military (which means we are going to promote it; that's how it works with the Left) just a score of years after Clinton proposed it? It was radical and engendered a huge fight at the time, yet now it is stuffy antiquated doctrine, sort of a Jim Crowe law of the modern world. It changed THAT fast, and opinions changed during the era of Bush, I might add. Bush set the tone for how we as a movement would fight, how we would explain, how we would build for the future. We spent so much time defending Bush we didn't have time to teach. So we lost a generation, perhaps permanently.

I fear we face that again. The only guy in the race who we could avoid that with is Ron Paul, but Paul is not a Conservative but rather a Libertarian, and in a world war (which we are in) is not the man for the job.

Is it really that hard to find a real Conservative? Newt certainly isn't, although he's been pegged as one by the media (who also say Romney, John McCain, and anybody with an R before their name is right of Atilla the Hun.) Bachman was one, but she's gone from the race. Perry talks a good game, although he too is finis, and he is said to talk a better game then he governed. Sarah Palin is quite good, and has the Reaganesque quality of being able to excite the base, but she has her problems (she's a huge supporter of amnesty for illegals, for instance) and she isn't running.

Where is the man who can rescue us in our hour of need?

America, indeed, the world is crying for that very man.

The Bible says a nation gets the leadership it deserves, and the whole World has been rudderless for decades now. There are no men of principle going into such roles, because nobody wants to endure the media prostate exam (just look at what was done to poor Herman Cain) and then suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous media fortune. We are getting the unprincipled, the unscrupulous, and the talentless. Let's face it; George W. was hardly the best the nation has to offer. He mainly had name recognition.

And, as Jesus said "I come in my Father's name and you reject me; another will come in his own name and him will you follow". Barack Obama came in his own name "we are the one's we have been waiting for" "if you love me, pass this bill" etc. Obama's failure has been in leadership also, but he has had minions in Congress energized and active, ever working their iniquity, and so his diabolical program has proceeded. The leadership we do have in America is all bad, leading this nation astray.

The Apostle Paul warned that "as anti-Christ is coming, so many antichrists have already come" and anyone or anything that opposes Christ is Anti-Christ. Clearly, Obama is a form of Anti-christ; he is the most pro-abortion guy ever in office, not even exempting botched abortions or partial birth abortion. He advocates charity to the poor by forcibly confiscating from those who are not poor aka stealing. He seeks to cure the blind and lame by human methods imposed by government, rather than doing the job himself. He seeks to exalt himself above all others and never mentions God, or when he does it is with his own name in the same breath. He concerns himself with the physical well-being of the masses but ignores their spiritual health. He is quick to yield the power of the sword to force those who do not agree with him to bend their knees.

We followed him once. Will we follow him again? The Bible describes the Beast as having a mortal head wound and coming back to life; is that a political head wound? Will he rise from the political grave?

Probably not, but he will act as "a voice crying in the wilderness" for one who is to come. A strong, charismatic leader would be a powerful magnet to most people, because this nation and indeed the entire world is drowning in a quagmire of puny men. The last few election cycles have seen a GOP field that is nothing but a quagmire of puny men.

So I would say at this point I am going Santorum, although with reservations. It's more of the same-old, same-old, but I don't see anyone else who I consider viable. Ron Paul is great when he is good, but he's terrible when he is not, and ultimately I think he misses the vital point, that we need a return to tradition, to morals, to GOD in this country if we are to overcome our troubles. The Founding Father's understood that well. Ron Paul would give us relief from some government, but in the end liberalism would advance greatly under him, because he will leave a spiritual vacuum that the Left will fill. And that's not to mention his foreign policy ideas.

These are sad times.

Is it Hot because it's Cold?

2012-01-20T06:08:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

One of the more counterintuitive claims by the Global Warming Alarmists is that a warming of the globe triggers cold weather and heavy snowfall. The argument is that a warmer planet means more water vapor in the atmosphere, which means more winter snow, which reflects more sunlight off the globe, leading to bitterly cold wind patterns coming from the colder parts. It's cold because it's warm, according to Judah Cohen, climate modeler at the consulting firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Lexington, Massachusetts, in a 2010 op-ed in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26cohen.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

" As global temperatures have warmed and as Arctic sea ice has melted over the past two and a half decades, more moisture has become available to fall as snow over the continents. So the snow cover across Siberia in the fall has steadily increased.

The sun’s energy reflects off the bright white snow and escapes back out to space. As a result, the temperature cools. When snow cover is more abundant in Siberia, it creates an unusually large dome of cold air next to the mountains, and this amplifies the standing waves in the atmosphere, just as a bigger rock in a stream increases the size of the waves of water flowing by."

End excerpt.

I wrote about this at the time, and argued that Cohen was taking the not-so unusual and conflating it in light of Global Warming theory. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/12/snow_blind.html

I made the following observation:

"Furthermore, what do we mean by unusual weather events? We have had blizzards -- many of them -- in the past, and will continue to have them in the future. What is different is that now we are studying every patch of the globe intently, using satellites (and satellite data has only been available since the end of the '70's) and other high-tech gadgets. Are these really unusual weather patterns or simply things we are only now noticing? For example, Sioux Falls, SD received 21 inches of snow in the blizzard of 1909, and 20 inches in 1917. The snowiest year on their record was 1968, when they received 96 total inches.

You will notice that the year of drastic snow melt in the Arctic -- 1922 -- did not make honorable mention there. In fact, Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover Area (SCA) in winter did rise by the end of the 1920's, not during the melt of 1921, according to the IPCC and as of 2005 was down considerably. If Arctic ice melt is causing more snow, then we should see this happen when the Arctic is ice free. The IPCC's own work shows less snow in spring and summer, I might add."

End excerpt.

Well, Cohen is still at it; this time in a new paper entitled "Arctic warming, increasing snow cover and widespread boreal winter cooling". According to the abstract:

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/1/014007

"The most up to date consensus from global climate models predicts warming in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) high latitudes to middle latitudes during boreal winter. However, recent trends in observed NH winter surface temperatures diverge from these projections. For the last two decades, large-scale cooling trends have existed instead across large stretches of eastern North America and northern Eurasia. We argue that this unforeseen trend is probably not due to internal variability alone. Instead, evidence suggests that summer and autumn warming trends are concurrent with increases in high-latitude moisture and an increase in Eurasian snow cover, which dynamically induces large-scale wintertime cooling. Understanding this counterintuitive response to radiative warming of the climate system has the potential for improving climate predictions at seasonal and longer timescales."

End excerpt.

O.K.; so Cohen is still peddling his theory that it's cold because it's hot. Well, one must ask, if a dearth of ice in the Arctic Ocean leads to higher snowfall, which leads to colder weather, what is it that is making this year's warmer weather? Arctic sea ice was well below average this year. See http://www.sciencepoles.org/news/news_detail/january_2012_nsidc_sea_ice_update/ and http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png

Granted, Siberian snow cover was down, but why was it down if Global Warming is in full swing and warmer Arctic temperatures mean higher snowfall?

Please look at this graph. http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_vis.php?ui_year=2011&ui_month=12&ui_set=2 You will note that the deviation in snowfall in Siberia is minimal, meaning that there is neither an excess nor a dearth of snow. (Click on the right arrow to get January data as well.) Cohen's whole argument is predicated on the notion that snowfall in Siberia is critical for North American winters - yet this suggests that a. Arctic Sea Ice has made no difference on Siberian snowfall and b. a dearth of Siberian snowfall is not at the heart of the curren warm winter we are experiencing.

No, the warm winter we are experiencing stems from a strong positive Arctic Oscillation (AO) http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2012/01/17/aoindex2011.jpg and a La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific. The strong AO means faster and colder wind patterns circling the Arctic, which in turn prevents cold air from being sucked down to lower latitudes. The La Nina weather pattern pushes warm air northward, rather than sucking cold air south. The combination of the two has caused the cold to stay north (where Alaska has been dumped on by massive snow storms and cold) and has led to tropical air being pulled across North America. Here is a good analysis from Nasa. http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/17jan_missingsnow/

If it's cold because it's hot, is it hot because it's cold? Are we experiencing Global Cooling, which is making North America more moderate? Is the future going to feature Saskatchewan becoming the new wine country, with Saskatoonian Chardonnay? Are we going to grow olives in Cody, Wyoming? Is America to become a warm continent? Planetary temperatures HAVe stabilized after all, and it appears the Earth may be moving into a cooling trend. Does that mean warmer winters? According to Cohen's logic it does.

I'm not buying any beachfront property at the Great Slave Lake any time soon.

Political Lagniappe

2012-01-19T05:48:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Lagniappe http://www.thefreedictionary.com/lagniappe

Noun 1. lagniappe - a small gift (especially one given by a merchant to a customer who makes a purchase)
gift - something acquired without compensation

The staff of Conservative HQ have a piece arguing that Rand Paul should be placed at the bottom of a Romney ticket.
http://www.conservativehq.com/article/6308-mitt-romney-needs-rand-paul-his-ticket

Interesting idea.

I thought they were going to argue for RON Paul, the geriatric Fortress America guy running for Prez, but they are actually suggesting placing his son Rand, who I would agree is less squishy in terms of foreign affairs. Let's face it, folks; Ron Paul would be charicatured as Abe Simpson (the father of television's cartoon Homer) comes to Washington. On the top of the ticket he would be disasterous; even if he somehow found a way to win (and there is no way America would elect him) he would be impotent, with Congress simply ignoring him. Reagan was able to whip up the American People using the bully pulpit, and force Congress's hand, but Paul lacks the dynamism to do that - outside of his devotees. Also, many of those devotees are young and often ex-Democrat voters disenchanted with the two party system, and they believe an outsider candidate is what is needed. Many of them thought Obama was that outsider, and now they are on board with Paul. Where will they be in two years? Where will they be when Paul cannot deliver what he is advocating? I really doubt Paul's ability to hold his base over time. He won't have the Democrats, of course, nor the GOP, really. He would be Andrew Johnson; a perpetual outsider incapable of moving Congress.

But he might do at the bottom of the ticket. Moreso, his son, who is younger, more dynamic, and perhaps a safer bet in terms of foreign policy. Most Americans do not advocate Fortress America. Few believe it is in our best intersts to establish a quasi-isolationist policy; most Americans rightly understand that our enemies aren't going to leave us alone just because we pull back. This isn't competition for resources or prestige, but a war of extermination. Islam is rising, and Islam has always believed it is the rightful ruler of the whole world. The Moslems are perpetually at war. Our retreat will be but an opportunity. Americans understand this. But Paul couldn't do too much trouble at the bottom of the ticket, and perhaps he will drag a lot of votes with him.

Rand Paul would be better.

BUT...

FDR's Vice President John Nance Garner told Lyndon Johnson (who had just been asked to be Kennedy's veep) that the Vice Presidency "isn't worth a bucket of warm piss" (this is often sanitized when reproduced to be "spit") and he's right; the Veep has only a couple of duties; presiding over the Senate, which is only necessary when votes are razor thin, being ready to take the reins if something should happen to his boss, being the attack dog for the Administration, and taking the fall for the Administration when trouble comes. (Eisenhower perfected that technique, tossing the hapless Richard Nixon to the media lions without preparing him first.) The Veep doesn't even get his own Vice Presidential House, but has to live in the United States Naval Observatory, and before 1974 had to buy his own domicile. (I'm really surprised he isn't in the basement with the janitor.) It's not a very highly regarded position.

And it's not a very influential one. Nobody remembers vice presidents. Very few have been elected to the Presidency or other high office. And very few have had much influence over their Presidents. Dick Cheney was one of the most powerful Veeps ever, and he shows his disgust with being "frozen out" by others in the Bush Administration (read his memoir.) George H.W. Bush clearly was not a Reaganite, and his own Presidency divurged sharply as soon as he was in office. Certainly Joe Biden has little influence in the Obama Administration today. Ron or Rand Paul's tenure of office would be of little consequence in a Romney Administration.

And does anybody really see Ron Paul acting as Administration attack dog? Yapping Peekapoo, maybe...

That is NOT an insult to Dr. Paul's ideas, but he won't be there to put forward his own ideas. He will be there to defend the Administration, and Paul will have to LIE about his feelings to do so. He will have to come out firing, not just lie quietly. Paul is not exactly a fiery speaker; it's his ideas that excite people. He'll have to keep mum on those ideas or get another job.

Now, the only point of bringing either Paul on-board would be to draw Paul supporters. That indeed may work - at least once. But will it work against Hillary in 2016? How long before his supporters sour on him as a sellout?

It's strictly a campaign gimmick, albeit quite possibly a good one.

Maybe it's all we need right now. Maybe. But we're still stuck with the consummate insider, Mitt Romney. And the problem in the GOP, the war for control of the party, will still be there, with the elites better entrenched. Often half a loaf is better than none, but sometimes half a loaf just means you will starve tomorrow rather than today.

Sometimes that can be little consolation.

Washing Out Mouths with Lie SOPA

2012-01-19T05:06:00.000-08:00

Ron De Haan

This first appeared at Sullivan's Travelers. http://rarereaders.seablogger.com/2012/01/the-secret-behind-sopa/

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet http://vimeo.com/31100268 from Fight for the Future http://vimeo.com/fightforthefuture on Vimeo.

Anthony Watts WUWT has joined the SOPA protests and their are some damn good reasons to do so. Pay a visit to his site for a short explanation about the backgrounds.
Just think China and how they run the internet to give you an idea what the people behind the SOPA proposals have in mind.
For a more extensive explanation and background you can go here and work through the links.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-secret-behind-sopa.html

One thing is sure, our government is screwing with our rights and it has to stop.

Hands Off the Internet! http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/technology/web-wide-protest-over-two-antipiracy-bills.html?hp

Mr. Smith Does Dirty

2012-01-19T04:51:00.000-08:00

Brian Birdnow tells what REALLY happened when Mr. Smith went to Washington.
http://townhall.com/columnists/brianbirdnow/2012/01/18/republican_politics_election_fraud__mass_media_in_st_louis/page/full/

From the article:

"The second old chestnut trotted out by the mainstream media is the alleged racism of the Republican Party, and its wholesale appeal to the racial fears of a white electorate comprising the GOP base. The storyline supposes that Republican warnings of the dangers of “big government” and ruinous federal spending are actually code words which encourage supporters to rest assured the GOP will reimpose Jim Crowism and segregation at the earliest possible opportunity. This accusation is also showing its age, but it still plays fairly well, so the media will use it for an undetermined number of years into the new century.

Again, none of this material is surprising to citizens who read major metropolitan daily newspapers. It came as no real bombshell, therefore, when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a commentary piece on the Op-Ed page of the newspaper on Wednesday, January 4, 2012 in which the author attacked the GOP for racism, and traced this race baiting back to the 1960s and the halcyon days of Governor George Wallace. The author, a self proclaimed “liberal Democrat”, is a political science professor named Jeff Smith. Dr. Smith claims that the GOP inherited its race baiting ways from Governor Wallace of Alabama, conveniently ignoring Wallace’s own Democratic Party affiliation. Professor Smith then argues that candidate and later President Nixon refined this appeal to race, while Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush institutionalized and professionalized the practice. Finally, the good political scientist argues that modern Republicans like Perry, Paul, Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney are simply using the old GOP playbook.

While this level of insult rises to slander, it is certainly just politics as usual for the mainstream media, and Republican candidates are advised to shrug it off as meaningless chatter. What is surprising, even startling, to those few of us who still read the Post-Dispatch, is the fact that the author of this hate-mongering piece, Professor Jeff Smith, is a former Democratic state senator from Missouri, representing the west side of St. Louis.

Moreover, Senator Smith served a year in prison for electoral fraud and obstruction of justice, in connection with a losing bid for Congress in 2004.

At that time, Jeff Smith was a Political Science Professor at Washington University. He filed his candidacy to replace retiring Congressman Dick Gephardt, the longtime St. Louis Democrat. Smith ran well in the crowded Democratic primary, finishing second to Russ Carnahan, scion of a well-known Missouri Democratic dynasty. The Smith campaign drew kudos from around the country as an example of grassroots political organizing at its best. The campaign was the subject of an award winning documentary film entitled Can Mr. Smith Get To Washington Anymore? which earned critical praise and a nationwide run on PBS, in addition to an award as the best documentary at the Silverdocs film festival. Jeff Smith basked in the limelight of his near miss, and parlayed that race into a successful campaign for the Missouri state senate.

It all came crashing down, however, in the summer of 2009. Smith had committed perjury and filed a false affidavit with the Federal Election Commission in 2004, in connection with an investigation concerning election fraud in the congressional primary. In January, 2009 the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern Missouri, reopened the criminal investigation after uncovering new information concerning the obstruction of the FEC inquiry. Smith pleaded guilty to two felony counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice, with each count punishable by up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. He resigned his office on August 25, 2009 and was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison, and a $50,000 fine. Smith served his prison term in a federal facility in Manchester, Kentucky and spent three months in a halfway house in St. Louis. He was released from federal custody in late November of 2010.

Doctor Jeff Smith is now a professor of political science at the New School in New York City. His official bio states that he studies party realignment, election campaigns, and the role of race in politics. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch engages the services of an admitted criminal, convicted of election fraud, to write a hit piece, thinly disguised as commentary attacking the other major party for supposed misdeeds. What is next for the PD? Will they hire Bill Clinton to write essays concerning the importance of marital fidelity? Maybe they will employ Rod Blagojevich to opine about civil service reform when he gets out of the slammer."

End excerpt.

Don't miss the whole piece; it's about the media at it's worst, and about the way liberal Democrats can walk right out of prison into adulation and respect.

Charles Manson Energy

2012-01-19T04:36:00.000-08:00

Paul Driessen

It’s time to apply endangered species, wildlife and economic laws fairly and equitably

“… gleaming white wind turbines generating carbon-free electricity carpet chaparral-covered ridges and march down into valleys of Joshua trees.” This is “the future” of American energy – not “the oil rigs planted helter-skelter in [nearby] citrus groves,” nor the “smoggy San Joaquin Valley” a few miles away.

The Forbes article’s poetic paean to Aeolian energy nevertheless voiced consternation that a 300-megawatt “green” turbine project might kill some of the magnificent California condors that are just coming back from the edge of extinction – and the project might be cancelled as a result.

Indeed, the US Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) has asked Kern County to “exercise extreme caution” in approving projects in the Tehapachi area, because of potential threats to condors. The “conundrum will force some hard choices about the balance we are willing to strike between obtaining clean energy and preserving wild things,” the article suggested. Hopefully, it concluded, new “avian radar units” will be able to detect condors and automatically shut down turbines when one approaches.

All Americans hope condors will not be sliced and diced by giant Cuisinarts. But most of us are puzzled that so few “environmentalists” and FWS “caretakers” express concern about the countless bald and golden eagles, hawks, falcons, vultures, ducks, geese, bats and other rare, threatened, endangered and common flying creatures imperiled by turbine blades.

And many of us get downright angry at the selective, indeed hypocritical ways in which endangered species and other wildlife laws are applied – leaving wind turbine operators free to exact their carnage, while harassing and punishing oil companies and citizens.

In 2011, following an intensive million-dollar, 45-day helicopter search for dead birds in North Dakota oil fields by FWS officials, US Attorney Timothy Purdon prosecuted seven oil and gas companies for inadvertently killing 28 mallard ducks, flycatchers and other common birds that were found dead in or near uncovered waste pits. Under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the companies and their executive officers faced fines of up to $15,000 per bird, plus six months in prison. (They eventually agreed to plead guilty and pay $1,000 per bird.)

Also in 2011, an FWS agent charged an 11-year-old Virginia girl with illegally “taking” a baby woodpecker that the girl had rescued from a housecat, even though she intended to release the bird after ensuring it was OK. The threatened $535 fine was finally dropped, after the FWS was deservedly ridiculed in the media.

The mere possession of an eagle feather by a non-Indian can result in fines and imprisonment, even if the feather came from a bird butchered by a wind turbine: up to $100,000, a year in prison or both for a first offense. Poisoning or otherwise killing common bats that have nested in one’s attic can cost homeowners thousands of dollars in fines.

Wind turbine companies, officers and employees, however, are immune from prosecution, fines or imprisonment, regardless of how many rare, threatened, endangered or migratory birds and bats they kill. In fact, FWS data show that wind turbines slaughter some 400,000 birds every year. If “helter-skelter” applies to any energy source, it is wind turbines, reflecting their Charles Manson effect on birds.

The hypocritical Obama-Purdon-FWS policy certainly protects, promotes and advances an anti-hydrocarbon, catastrophic global warming agenda that is increasingly at odds with environmental, scientific, economic, job-creation and public opinion reality. It also safeguards wind turbines that survive solely because of government mandates, taxpayer subsidies … and exemptions from laws that penalize and terrorize the rest of us.

It may be true that housecats and reflective windows kill more songbirds than turbines do. However, that oft-cited defense of wind energy Cuisinarts is irrelevant to the birds and bats discussed here.

Even if avian radar and turbine shutdown systems do eventually work, and can actually and abruptly stop turbine blades before they butcher an approaching bird, should they be limited to condors? Shouldn’t they be required for eagles and falcons – and for hawks, ducks, flycatchers, bats and other protected species? Geese, for example, to prevent a repeat of the December 7, 2011 massacre of numerous snow geese by wind turbines along upstate New York Route 190, as reported by a motorist?

Why aren’t wind developers and permitting authorities required to consider the lost economic benefits of butchered birds and bats, which do so much to control rats and insects that carry diseases and destroy crops? Shouldn’t that analysis be made mandatory, as more wind projects are proposed, thereby posing an ever-increasing threat to numerous species – and even to the survival of some?

Of course, even condor protection alone could reduce affected turbine electricity output to 20 or even 10% of rated capacity, instead of their current 30% average. Adding other protected species would drive nearly all actual wind turbine electricity output down below 5% – making the turbines virtually worthless, and driving the exorbitant cost of wind energy even higher.

But why should wind turbines be above the law? In fact, why should we even worry about reducing their electricity output?

America’s environmentalists, legislators, judges and bureaucrats have already made hundreds of millions of acres of resource-rich land off limits – and rendered centuries of oil, gas, coal, uranium, geothermal and other energy unavailable. The Environmental Protection Agency’s anti-coal zero-pollution rules, intense opposition to the Keystone pipeline, and looming restrictions on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas are already further impairing electricity and other energy availability and reliability.

This government-imposed energy deprivation is already driving families into energy poverty and sending more jobs overseas.

Put bluntly, wind energy is unsustainable. It kills unconscionable numbers of bats, raptors and other birds. It requires billions in perpetual subsidies – and billions more for (mostly) gas-fired backup generators. It impacts millions of acres of scenic, wildlife and agricultural land – and depends on vast amounts of raw materials, whose extraction and processing further impairs global land, air and water quality. Its expensive, unreliable electricity kills two jobs for every one supposedly created.

A far more rational public policy would cut out the costly, unreliable middleman. It would forget about wind turbines, simply build more gas, coal and nuclear generators, to generate reliable, affordable, sustainable electricity – and apply the same laws fairly and equitably to all energy sources.

____________

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

Incomplete eBook Speaking Ability Devices

2012-01-19T04:27:00.000-08:00

Jack Kemp

A while back, I posted an article here about eBook readers for blind peoples, namely devices which could speak in a clear voice that was somewhat human as the machine read text. I have learned a bit more about the latest methods available, but what I write here is incomplete and not worthy of being called a full article because of major gaps in my not testing the equipment and software involved and not interviewing technical experts - or being one. However, there are facts here that will be new to some people who know a blind student and/or veteran and thus some value can had from reading this piece written in a conversational tone, essentially a long email. Even my just telling readers the formal name of such a capability, Text-to-Speech, can help people in inquiring further into this issue.

First I want to mention software that will read a text file such as in Microsoft Word or ordinary text or Adobe pdf file formats. It can even read a text file and copy it to an MP3 file that can be played on an iPod or burned onto a CD or even played on a fancy cell phone like a Blackberry. And a free version can be downloaded at this website below onto one's desktop or laptop computer. Various IBM-compatible tablet devices may have this speaking capability built in or may be able to use some add-on application that enable Text-to-Voice reading by the machine. I personally have never used this software so I can't vouch for it, but this information on Text-to-Speech software.

Here are some details on one of the software application programs:

http://www.nch.com.au/verbose/index.html?gclid=CKS__87-2a0CFYPc4AodXH3QlQ

DESCRIPTION

Verbose Text to Speech Software
Converts text to voice or saves as mp3
Verbose is an easy and convenient text to speech converter that can read aloud or save spoken text to mp3 files.
Reads any text on your computer out loud
Convert text to mp3 and save to listen to later
Installs and ready to read text in just minutes
With Verbose text reading software, you can have Verbose read the current text on your screen out loud with the simple press of a button by setting up system-wide hotkeys.
Alternatively, use Verbose text to voice software to save your text documents or emails to mp3 audio files for your mobile phone, iPod or mp3 player, so you can listen to them on the go.

END OF QUOTE

When I last wrote about this, the only off-the-shelf ebook reader that had full capacities was the Apple iPad. In a somewhat casual search this week for a device that would read to me, a regularly sighted person who wanted to save time, I found out that:

The new Amazon Kindle Fire ebook reader, the high end color model, could actually read the many books (but not every book) that were text-to-speech enabled. It says on the Amazon website in each book's description which ones can be read in a speaking voice. There may also be a version of software with this Kindle capacity of text-to-speech that can be downloaded onto a desktop or laptop computer Nook eBook reader. This includes hundreds of thousands of books that have no copyright that can be downloaded for free. Once again, I have never used this on my equipment and only have a generalized sense of what's available. Downloading a second Nook eBook reader at home would cause me technical problems that I don't want to deal with at this time - and I have personally decided against buying an Amazon Kindle Fire ebook reader.

Yet here is some more information - a rambling, informative discussion that some tech support person found for me, a discussion on a website:

http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php?topic=49543.0;wap2

I know I made the comment that the Kindle for PC app with the Accessibility plugin was neutered, but after further investigation and experimentation, I have learned that it is fully accessible to a reading disabled person. The thing that is most amazing of all is that TTS disabled books will read on it with Samantha or Tom just like they do on the physical Kindle ereaders. Also, when you click on the Go to Kindle Store button, the browser opens up and the screen reader on the computer tells the reading disabled person what is on the Kindle Store page. So let's do a comparison and see how the two stack up.

Kindle 3 w WIFI only - v - a netbook w WIFI.

You can download books when connected to a wireless network.
You can shop the Kindle Store and surf the web.
You can access your home and archived items pages.
You can read TTS enabled and disabled Kindle books.
You can send documents to your Kindle 3 or Kindle for PC app.
You can read for a 2 weeks to a month with both the Kindles and the Netbook with the wireless turned off. This is where the Netbook takes a big hit, but there is no reason if you are not using the display and turn down or off the backlight, that you shouldn't get almost twice or twice the battery life. So the physical Kindles win this one.
Physical Kindles are instant on whereas the Netbook has to be booted up before you can read with it. The physical Kindles win this round.
Both products have password protection is you decide to use it.
Both products allow a user to create collections. I'm going to say a tentative NO on this one because I don't think the Kindle apps have this capability.
Magazines, newspapers, and blogs, are I think only available on the Physical Kindles, so they win this one.
If I didn't mention this already, the netbook is going to get better battery life than any of the Kindles with TTS turned on, so the netbook wins this one.

Kindle Klassic, Kindle 2 w 3G, Kindle DX & DXG w 3G, and Kindle 3 w 3G and WIFI - v - a Netbook w WIFI and 3G on board.

You can download books when connected to a 3G & a wireless network when using the Kindle 3 or a Netbook w 3G access.
You can shop the Kindle Store and surf the web w 3G and WIFI access. This beats out all Kindles with the exception of the Kindle 3G/WIFI.
You can access your home and archived items pages.
You can read TTS enabled and disabled Kindle books. Since reading disabled Kindle or Kindle for PC app users are relying on a screen reader, it ends up being a draw.
You can send documents to you Kindle 3 or Kindle for PC app. On the Netbook, this is actually easier because you don't have to connect the physical Kindle ereader.
You can read for a 2 weeks to a month with both the Kindles and the Netbook with the wireless turned off. This is where the Netbook takes a big hit, but there is no reason if you are not using the display and turn down or off the backlight, that you shouldn't get almost twice or twice the battery life. So the physical Kindles win this one.
Physical Kindles are instant on whereas the Netbook has to be booted up before you can read with it. The physical Kindles win this round.
Both products have password protection is you decide to use it.
Both products allow a user to create collections. I'm going to say a tentative NO on this one because I don't think the Kindle apps have this capability.
Magazines, newspapers, and blogs, are I think only available on the Physical Kindles, so they win this one.
If I didn't mention this already, the netbook is going to get better battery life than any of the Kindles with TTS turned on, so the netbook wins this one.

So do the rest of you see this comparison as being accurate? Also, is there something I have left out? If this comparison is accurate, then the reading disabled community has gained a lot with the Kindle for PC plugin. And I get to eat crow and need to apologize to Scott Turow, the authors guild, and the publishers if there were involved in the process of making this plugin happen.

Gene

I guess I'm at a loss on why the accessibility features really matter at all anymore on the Kindle 3 or the Kindle for apps since the publishers and the author's guild have effectively neutered them by having the ability to disable TTS at will. I tried the newly updated Kindle for PC app released in the last day or so, and learned that if the TTS is disabled in a book the TTS feature in the app won't work, so basically nothing was gained from Amazon's hard work and effort to support Kindle 3 and Kindle for app owners with reading disabilities. I emailed back and fourth with Scott Turow, the president of the author's guild, over several days and basically got the pat answer that being able to read with TTS and reading visually entitle him, the other authors, and the publishers to be paid twice for the same book. I suggested using an installed, non transferable, key system to re-enable the TTS of the Kindle if a Kindle owner with a reading disability proves they have a reading disability. This is being done with talking books and other services for people with reading disabilities now. He said they have looked into it, but I don't believe him for one moment. In the end, it comes down to pure selfishness, greed, and laziness on his part and on the part of the publishers. It is much easier to tell me they have looked into it and are stuck rather than actually applying some mental energy to solve the problem, which once solved could be a win win for the people who are reading disabled, the authors of the guild, and the publishers. I'm sure there are many Scott Turow fans out there, but I'm hoping everyone who buys his books would see how his attitude represents and genuine lack of foresight, decency, and respect for people with reading disabilities. He doesn't deserve my business and won't get it ever. And I'm asking that Scott Turow fans consider boycotting his catalog of books and other content he produces. Maybe while he's watching his sales and income drop, he will go back to this issue and take a second and hard look at trying to do the right thing and fix this problem so people with reading disabilities can in one more way be a part of the same world we all live in. Anyway, the announcement is below. Check it out. - Gene

Introducing Free Kindle Software with Accessibility Features

Sent By:
"Amazon.com" On: Jan 01/19/11 1:38 AM

Dear blind-interest@amazon.com subscriber,

Amazon.com is releasing a new version of Kindle for PC that adds accessibility features designed for blind and low-vision customers.

Kindle for PC with Accessibility Plugin is a free, downloadable application for your Windows PC. It provides the following accessibility features: text-to-speech reading with adjustable voice settings, voice-guided menu navigation, large font sizes, high contrast reading mode, keyboard navigation, and accessible shortcuts.

With this software, for the first time ever, the entire collection of English language books in the Kindle Store can be read aloud. With over 750,000 English language titles, Amazon offers the largest selection of accessible ebooks. In order to use the text-to-speech feature, an external screen reader program must be installed and running on the Windows PC.

The free download is available at www.amazon.com/kindle/accessibility.

We welcome your feedback at kindle-PC-accessibility-feedback@amazon.com.

Sincerely,
The Kindle Team

© 2011 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Amazon, the Amazon a logo, the AmazonKindle logo, Kindle, and Whispersync are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.
Amazon.com, 410 Terry Avenue, North, Seattle, WA 98109. Reference: 18358260
Jeff Tompkins:
I haven't had my Kindle software neutered, but if it starts exhibiting bad behavior (especially toward dinner guests) I guess I'll have to get it done.
kb7uen Gene:
Well if it does happen, it would probably be on a Wednesday.

Gene
NightReader:
Some people won't do the right thing until they have to do the right thing.

Someone needs to sue the publishers who turn off TTS and make them pay a few hundred million dollars. Then, maybe they won't think forcing blind people to buy more expensive forms of media is so much fun.
kb7uen Gene:
Well, for people with reading disabilities, it really doesn't result in a greater cost because of the availability of talking books and shared scanned books, which are free for people who qualify for the services. Unfortunately, there are some blind people out there who make good money and still wouldn't go out and buy a book or music if their lives depended on it because they are so used to getting so many things for free. It really doesn't register with these few people that the authors and musicians created those works and are entitled to be paid for their intellectual property.

Do I use the services of Bookshare.org, Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic, and National Library Services for the Blind and Physically Handicapped? The answer is yes and they have made a big difference in my quality of life.

END OF QUOTE

The Barnes & Nobles Nook ebook reader only had text-to-speech capabilities for children's books: a quick look at their adult books showed none enabled for Text-to-Voice and a discussion with a Best Buy saleswoman said this was the situation. That hardly constitutes more than anecdotal evidence, but I'm not going to do an extensive search of all machinery available on the market today. The Nook is steadily loosing out in sales to the Amazon Kindle becoming the major ebook from a book seller, from rumors that I hear and I believe that is true in my opinion. I have not investigated any upgrades to the Sony ebook reader.

The Shape of Things that have Come

2012-01-18T06:08:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Researchers at Cornell have devised a "time cloak" by bending light waves around a bubble, speeding and slowing down the light so as to create a "hole in time" as this article is claiming.
http://scitechdaily.com/time-cloak-creates-hole-in-time-makes-events-disappear/

From the piece:

"The General Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein implies that gravity can cause time to slow down. Scientists have now shown that there is a way to stop time altogether; or maybe more accurately, to give the appearance that time has stopped by bending light around events to create a hole in time.

Recent scientific demonstrations have shown that objects can be made to disappear by bending the waves of visible light. The main idea behind this is that if light moves around an object instead of hitting it, it cannot be perceived. This makes the object in question invisible, at least to observers.

Cornell University scientists have used this concept to burrow a hole in time. This hole has a very short existence window, about 40 trillionths of a second, but imagine if this could be extended. Alex Gaeta, one of the physicists involved, states that slowing light down and speeding it up creates a gap in the light beam in time. This might make it seem as if the event had never occurred.

The time-stopping experiment, as described in their article in the journal Nature, used a laser beam aimed at a probe. The beam passed through a device that they named the time lens, which modifies the light beam’s temporal distribution. It allows them to do funny things with light in the time domain. Moti Fridman created a method which allowed them to change the frequency and wavelength of the beam. This meant that it moved at a different velocity, which in turn created the time gap."

End excerpt.

Soooo...

Now we know where Obama's birth certificate went! Doubtless that was the first item the researchers attempted to cloak!

When the Book of Genesis begins with "let there be light" it was far more prescient than any materialists give it credit for; the Universe is little more than light. Matter is energy in a solid form, light turned hard, if you will. And time only exists in conjunction with light. And all of the physical laws of the Universe are predicated on their visibility and their relations in time, so they too are all predicated on light. Every physical law is tied to light and time, which themselves are intimiately tied to the observer. In the end, consciousness is necessary for the existence of the entire Universe!

It really is an astounding thought.

A couple of years ago, some physicists at the University of Rochester made a beam of light go backwards - and at a speed considerably greater than light! http://www.livescience.com/790-light-travels-faster-light.html (Relativity was not violated here; the beam went back over the exact same path it had followed, thus not violating any fundamental principles, since INFORMATION was not moving faster than light, and the beam was not traversing any space but the limited one it had already traversed.)

According to the article:

"
Robert Boyd, professor of optics.
CREDIT: University of Rochester

It sounds nuts, but a scientist says his team has made light go backward. And this is not a simple trick of mirrors.

Previous work has slowed light to a crawl. But in the new research, a pulse of light is given a negative speed and—as if just to make your head spin—the researcher says the experiment made light appear to exceed its theoretical speed limit.

If you totally confused, don't worry. This reporter doesn't get it either. Nor do a lot of really smart scientists.

Follow along with a
graphic or animation.

"I've had some of the world's experts scratching their heads over this one," says Robert Boyd, a professor of optics at the University of Rochester. "It's weird stuff."

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See the video

The research was reported in the May 12 issue of the journal Science. Though not normally stated in news reports, Science is a peer-reviewed journal. That means some experts read Boyd's paper and said it was good to publish.

That said, nobody would blame you if you stop here. Otherwise, grab a couple aspirin, have a look at depictions of the experiment in this graphic or this animation, and read on.

We're going to let Boyd do the explaining. And this next sentence is the crux of it all:

"We sent a pulse through an optical fiber, and before its peak even entered the fiber, it was exiting the other end. Through experiments we were able to see that the pulse inside the fiber was actually moving backward, linking the input and output pulses."

"The pulse of light is shaped like a hump with a peak and long leading and trailing edges. The leading edge carries with it all the information about the pulse and enters the fiber first. By the time the peak enters the fiber, the leading edge is already well ahead, exiting. From the information in that leading edge, the fiber essentially 'reconstructs' the pulse at the far end, sending one version out the fiber, and another backward toward the beginning of the fiber."

Let's put that another way, verbatim from a statement issued by the University of Rochester:

"As the pulse enters the material, a second pulse appears on the far end of the fiber and flows backward. The reversed pulse not only propagates backward, but it releases a forward pulse out the far end of the fiber. In this way, the pulse that enters the front of the fiber appears out the end almost instantly, apparently traveling faster than the regular speed of light."

What about Einstein, who said nothing can exceed light-speed?

"Einstein said information can't travel faster than light, and in this case, as with all fast-light experiments, no information is truly moving faster than light," Boyd said.

A spokesperson at the university's communications department added this: "Everything that defines the pulse that enters, also defines the pulse that exits. But the energy of the light does not travel faster than light."

End excerpt.

Now, imagine a particle moving through the fiber optics at the same time as the light pulse; what would you see if you had a teenie-tiny telescope to watch? I would think that as the light reversed the particle would seem to reverse as well. It's spin would appear retrograde, in fact, all of it's properties would appear retrograde. Now, a retrograde particle is an antiparticle. Did the particle become antimatter for a miniscule amou=mcnt of time?

There is an old theory, now largely ignored, that antimatter is really matter moving backwards in time, and that is why we don't see any large amounts around. Remember, Einstein's equation e=mc2? That means m=e/c2, which means that a LOT of energy can create a little matter. But Paul Dirac showed that this equation can be solved as either positive or negative. Einstein knew it, too, but assumed the imaginary equations were just noise. Dirac showed that, yes, there are indeed anti-particles, and the discovery of the positron followed shortly. In nature there are things called virtual particles, where energy forms a particle and it's antiparticle, and the two annihilate each-other immediately. The only place where matter is created is near charged black holes, where the charge pushes away one particle and the gravity sucks in another. But outside of that one has to look into a particle accelerator.

So the Universe should be both matter and antimatter in equal portions, yet the observable universe is all matter. Nobody has been able to figure out exactly where all that antimatter went, although there are some theories.

But one theory was that antimatter was moving backward in time.

Now, if you look at that particle going into the fiber optics where the light beam reverses, it would seem reversed, like antimatter. The next logical step is to conclude that it IS antimatter, but moving backward in time! The light, after all, is moving backward, and time is entirely predicated on light.

So, is this time travel? I know time travel is possible.

A casual glance at the United States is proof positive that time travel is possible; the U.S. is languishing in the 1930's, with Depression-era unemployment, government works projects designed to stimulate the economy, with a growing foreign threat being ignored by a Hooverian President. We also see the 1970's here, with complete with solar panels, fears of climate change, racial politics, high gas prices. I'm surprised Mr. Obama isn't wearing high heels and a polyester leisure suit!

Obama certainly has taken us for a spin in the way-back machine!

And he didn't even need physicists from Cornell or Rochester to help him with that!

The U.S. is on a Suicide Watch

2012-01-18T05:28:00.000-08:00

By Alan Caruba

In 1991, the Soviet Union, arguably the greatest experiment in Communism, collapsed. After Mao Zedong died in 1976, his successors moved to shift its Communist economy to one that embraced Capitalism while retaining centralized government control.

Following World War Two, the recovering nations of Europe were rescued from Communism by the Marshall Plan, but adopted Communism-Light in the form of Socialism. The U.S. was already headed in that direction, creating programs that we now call “entitlements.” For most of the nation’s history, such “entitlements” did not exist.

What binds together the financial problems of the West is the common thread of infantile behavior and thought. One might call it wishful thinking. Instead of encouraging people to provide for old age and possible illness, politicians decided to turn government into Big Daddy, the eternal source of money for everything.

Need to go to college, start a business, or plan for retirement? Government would be there to help. All this ignored the need to actually pay for these programs. In the case of Social Security Congress began to dip into its funding to pay for other programs! This is what children do.

One can look around the world and see what a failure both Communism and Socialism have been. Governments spending more than their tax and other revenues have suffered grievously from this path to default and that includes the United States of America. It can be argued that, with few exceptions--the Reagan years come to mind—Presidents have been poorly served by their economic advisors.

Politicians make poor economists because, in America, members of the House must think of getting reelected every two years and Senators every six. Moreover, being politicians, they believe that the more federal largess they can bring back to their State and then brag about is the one true path to reelection.

At the very beginning of the nation, Thomas Jefferson said it best. “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

How many commissions and special committees have earnestly produced reports intended to deal with a government grown too large? At the federal level, some two million or more Americans are employed promulgating a deluge of regulations and pushing paper.

Now President Obama says he wants to streamline the federal government.

The real issue is not “streamlining” government agencies by gathering them together under one roof and one administrator, but the failure to end government departments and agencies that no longer serve a useful purpose and whose removal would also remove countless obstacles to economic growth.

In April 2011, Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute warned that “the federal government is on track to spend more than $3.5 trillion this year. What most people don’t know is that government actually costs about 50% more than what it spends. That’s because complying with federal regulations costs an additional $1.75 trillion—nearly an eighth of GDP. And almost none of that cost appears on the budget.”

The United States of America, the greatest engine of wealth the world has ever seen, is bankrupt. The national debt exceeds the Gross Domestic Product, the sum total of all revenue generated by goods and services.

The President has asked that the debt ceiling be raised another trillion or so and Congress will comply. That, I submit, is insane.

I also submit that, since Barack Obama was sworn into office on January 20, 2009, the nation has been witness to the economic insanity personified in the man and in the Democrat-controlled Congress that was his partner until 2010 when the control of the House of Representatives was wrested away by the Tea Party movement and its support for Republican candidates.

The only constant in life is change. America’s demography has changed. We have, thanks to medical care and other advantages, a much older segment of the population than ever before, but the nation from the 1930s to the 1960s had committed itself to ensure they would have Medicare and Medicaid at a time when people more often than not died in their 50’s and 60’s. We now have an average life expectancy of 78 years. My parents lived into their 90s.

Politics, not economics, continues to make it impossible to revise and restructure both Medicare and Social Security to reflect this reality. Instead, we had Obamacare foisted upon us which took trillions from Medicare and imposes rules that will let elderly heart attack or stroke victims die rather than pay for a level of care to which they contributed during their working years.

If the Supreme Court declares Obamacare unconstitutional it will go away. If we elect a Republican Senate, the repeal already passed in the House will be passed and it will go away.

But America’s economic problems will not go away until Americans insist that the shackles of Big Government be cut loose to enable the growth of an energy industry that can not only make the nation energy independent, but produce billions in revenue as far as the eye can see into the future.

The tax system with its thousands of pages must be revised to a simpler, fairer program. It makes no sense that forty percent of Americans pay no taxes at all.

It’s not that we don’t know what must be done. Conservative think tanks like The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, The Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and others have spelled out programs that can and will save America, but the nation must be led by a president who understands that Capitalism involves budgeting, planning, hard work, and—yes—risk.

The federal government is running on “continuing resolutions.” It has not had a formal budget since Obama arrived. This is no way to run the greatest nation on the face of the Earth. America is on a suicide watch and we are just an election away from saving it.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

And at the Congressional level

2012-01-18T05:18:00.001-08:00

Jack Kemp

Red State's Daniel Horowitz's piece "Breaking the GOP Cycle of Capitulation" http://www.redstate.com/dhorowitz3/2012/01/16/breaking-the-gop-cycle-of-capitulation/ is well worth reading. Here is a sample below, "the money quote:"

While only 66 House Republicans voted against the Budget Out-of-Control Act, there are signs that many others are beginning to catch onto the cycle of capitulation. It was evident during the year-end fight over the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance extension. Members who intuitively desired to do the right thing, yet were intimidated by the acerbic coercive tactics of leadership, are now willing to stand and fight this year. They realize that after a full year of the “Tea Party Congress,” we have not cut one cent from discretionary budget authority, even as mandatory entitlement spending continues to grow unchecked. They realize that we are not any closer to repealing Obamacare than we were in 2010.

This year, there will be numerous opportunities to fight statism; from blocking long-term unemployment and green energy tax credits to battles over surface transportation and the federal gasoline tax. By far, the most consequential battle will be fought over the FY 2013 budget, which will commence during the middle of April.

It’s not enough to merely introduce a virtuous budget resolution in April. If Republicans have no gumption to fight for some or most of the major provisions in the budget, all of Paul Ryan’s work will be worthless, as it turned out to be in 2011. The Republican Conference must unite behind two or three transformational reforms – or even one reform – in the budget resolution, and fight to the bitter end. Then, they must convey the message to Democrats that they will not budge, even as the clock ticks midnight on October 1.

Thurston Howell III...errr...Mitt will Dispirit the Base

2012-01-18T05:14:00.000-08:00

Jack Kemp

Steve McCann has a brilliant and honest article about the Republicans (Mitt Romney: The Last Republican President)? in American Thinker. http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/mitt_romney_the_last_republican_president.html#ixzz1jj1S632D

Here are his concluding paragraphs:

If ever a candidate mirrored the mindset and approach of George H.W. Bush, it is Mitt Romney.

This is the last hurrah of the Republican establishment. The conservatives and libertarians will vote for Romney in November, but only because he is not Barack Obama. There will be no enthusiasm, which will hurt the down ballot contests for the U.S. Senate, the House and state governorships. Despite the factors weighing against Obama in this upcoming election, it will be a much closer contest that it should be; perhaps a razor thin victory for Romney.

If Romney were to lose the election, there will be a grass-roots revolt against the Republican Party which will spell its demise. If he wins and the nation, through the mis-directed policies of Romney and the Republicans in the Congress, continues on its current path of compromising and nibbling around the edges of the nation's problems, then Romney will be the last Republican president and the specter of the Democrats re-assuming power will be a reality.

This is not only the most important election for the nation in over a century but also one that will determine the fate of a political party founded in 1854 in opposition to slavery and the corruption in the Democratic Party.

Washington Burning the Delaware< er, Millstone

2012-01-17T05:16:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Here is a fascinating historical tidbit; George Washington, intrigued by the news that there was a river (Pennsylvania's Millstone) that could be set on fire, hopped in a boat with Thomas Paine and, well, torched it up!

http://scienceprogress.org/2011/11/what-would-george-washington-do-about-fracking/

This courtesy of CCNET:

http://books.google.co.uk/booksid=aP9bAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA181&lpg=PA181&dq=Thomas+Paine+When+the+mud+at+the+bottom+was+disturbed+by+the+poles,+the+air+bubbles+rose+fast&source=bl&ots=lcKEvj7rST&sig=FUwDhoA6cjPukpmrQsRGq7mjDso&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WFcVT_vhKKKL4gTU1YT4A

The political and miscellaneous works of Thomas Paine, Printed and published by R. Carlile, London 1819 (pp. 180ff)

The muddy bottom of rivers contains great quantities of impure and often inflammable air (carbureted hydrogen gas), injurious to life; and which remains entangled in the mud till let loose from thence by some accident. This air is produced by the dissolution and decomposition of any combustible matter falling into the water and sinking into the mud, of which the following circumstance will serve to give some explanation.

In the fall of the year that New York was evacuated (1783), General Washington had his headquarters at Mrs. Berrian's, at Rocky Hill, in Jersey , and I was there; the Congress then sat at Prince Town. We had several times been told that the river or creek, that runs near the bottom of Rocky Hill, and over which there is a mill, might be set on fire, for that was the term the country people used; and as General Washington had a mind to try the experiment, General Lincoln, who was also there, undertook to make preparation for it against the next evening, November fifth. This was to be done, as we were told, by disturbing the mud at the bottom of the river, and holding something in a blaze, as paper or straw, a little above the surface of the water.

Colonels Humphreys and Cobb were at that time aides-de-camp of General Washington, and those two gentlemen and myself got into an argument respecting the cause. Their opinion was that, on disturbing the bottom of the river, some bituminous matter arose to the surface, which took fire when the light was put to it; I, on the contrary, supposed that a quantity of inflammable air was let loose, which ascended through the water, and took fire above the surface. Each party held to his opinion, and the next evening the experiment was to be made.

A scow had been stationed in the mill dam, and General Washington, General Lincoln and myself, and I believe Colonel Cobb (for Humphreys was sick), and three or four soldiers with poles, were pub on board the scow. General Washington placed himself at one end of the scow, and I at the other; each of us had a roll of cartridge paper, which we lighted and held over the water, about two or three inches from the surface, when the soldiers began disturbing the bottom of the river with the poles.

As General Washington sat at one end of the scow, and I at the other, I could see better anything that might happen from his light than I could from my own, over which I was nearly perpendicular. When the mud at the bottom was disturbed by the poles, the air bubbles rose fast, and I saw the fire take from General Washington's light and descend from thence to the [begin page 311] surface of the water, in a similar manner as when a lighted candle is held so as to touch the smoke of a candle just blown out, the smoke will take fire, and the fire will descend and light up the candle. This was demonstrative evidence that what was called setting the river on fire was setting on fire the inflammable air that arose out of the mud.

I mentioned this experiment to Mr. Ritten-house of Philadelphia, the next time I went to that city, and our opinion on the case was, that the air or vapor that issued from any combustible matter (vegetable or otherwise) , that underwent a dissolution and decomposition of its parts, either by fire or water in a confined place, so as not to blaze, would be inflammable, and would become flame whenever it came in contact with flame. In order to determine if this was the case, we filled up the breech of a gun barrel about five or six inches with sawdust, and the proper part with dry sand to the top, and after spiking up the touch-hole, put the breech into a smith's furnace and kept it red hot, so as to consume the sawdust; the sand of consequence would prevent any blaze.

We applied a lighted candle to the mouth of the barrel; as the first vapor that flew off would be humid, it extinguished the candle; but after applying the candle three or four times, the vapor that issued out began to flash; we then tied a bladder over the mouth of the barrel, which the vapor soon filled, and then tying a string round the neck of the bladder, above the muzzle, took the bladder off.

As we could not conveniently make experiments upon the vapor while it was in the bladder, the next operation was to get it into a phial. For this purpose, we took a phial of about three or four ounces, filled it with water, put a cork slightly into it, and introducing it into the neck of the bladder, worked the cork out, by getting hold of it through the bladder, into which the water then emptied itself, and the air in the bladder ascended into the phial; we then put the cork into the phial, and took it from the bladder. It was now in a convenient condition for experiment.

We put a lighted match into the phial, and the air or vapor in it blazed up in the manner of a chimney on fire; we extinguished it two or three times, by stopping the mouth of the phial; and putting the lighted match to it again it repeatedly took fire, till the vapor was spent, and the phial became filled with atmospheric air. These two experiments, that in which some combustible substance (branches and leaves of trees) had been decomposed by water, in the mud; and this, where the decomposition had been produced by fire, without blazing, shows that a species of air injurious to life, when taken into the lungs, may be generated from substances which, in themselves, are harmless. It is by means similar to these that charcoal, which is made by fire without blazing, emits a vapor destructive to life. I now come to apply these cases, and the reasoning deduced therefrom, to account for the cause of the yellow fever.

END EXCERPT

Too bad Washington didn't have this river at Valley Forge; he could have kept the men warm all winter! Washington started a far great conflagration, though, then merely setting a river on fire; he set a nation on fire!

A Modest Methane Proposal

2012-01-16T08:55:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

A quick thought; much is made by the Gang Green and their tame scientists about the dangers of carbon dioxide melting permafrost and releasing methane to trigger catastrophic global warming. Well, what are we waiting for? Methane is trapped under ice, under the sea, in the permafrost just waiting to be burned for fuel. Why aren't we extracting it, so if this great melting occurs we will have less to worry about?

Natural gas is largely methane. When methane is burned you get the following reaction:
CH4 + 2O2 > CO2 + 2H2O

So, you end up with water and carbon dioxide.

Shouldn't environmentalists be pushing for large scale extraction of natural gas, so that it does not become a super greenhouse gas? Isn't it better to burn methane and make carbon dioxide, a minor greenhouse gas, than to release the methane into the atmosphere, threating a runaway greenhouse effect.

Am I missing something here?

I See Dead People - get New Hampshire Ballots

2012-01-16T08:37:00.000-08:00

Jack Kemp

James O'Keefe of Project Veritas has done it again. He has sent people to the Democratic ballot table in the NH primary to ask for ballot forms for known dead people. Not only were most not refused (one poll worker knew the dead person), but no i.d. was required by law either.

See the video of this happening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-uVhhIlPk0&feature=player_embedded&utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1970

Cockroaches and the Research Works Act

2012-01-16T08:34:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Science is broken. No, I do not mean that it is no longer making exciting and important discoveries, but it is broken in the sense that accountability is shot to aych, ee, double hockey sticks. Increasingly, research is undertaken for a purpose other than the advancement of knowledge, and we are seeing increasingly a trend towards falsifying results to fit a particular conclusion.

Take Robert Liburdy; a cellular biologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. Liburdy did groundbreaking research on the dangers to cells posed by electromagnetic fields. Liburdy unfortunately faked all of his data, leading to a national scare.

How about John Darsee? He faked a bunch of cardiac research. Or U. of San Diego's Robert Slutsky (what a great name for a cheat!) who wrote a paper every ten days and was finally caught as a fake. Slutsky managed to convince a lot of reputable researches to sign on as co-authors while he made up science. Or what of William McBride, the guy who exposed thalidomide? He went after a drug called debentox, which was supposed to help with motion sickness. Unfortunately, McBride made it all up.

Or Jan Hendrick Schon, the boy wonder physicist of Bell Labs who was finally shown to have been faking all of his data. He would have gotten away with it had he not been quite so prodigious; writing around 40 papers a year. He would recycle the same graph for different papers, which is how he was eventually caught. Peer review failed to find his duplicity.

Here are some of the memorable science scandals. http://discovermagazine.com/2000/oct/featblunders

And let's not forget the big ones; nuclear winter, global cooling, acid rain, alar, Y2K, global warming, now oil fracking causing major earthquakes. And most of this stupidity is coming from the big science journals!

What is the answer to this? Sunshine is the best disinfectant, as they say; the more minds that can consider the work of individual scientists the greater the likelihood of detecting error or outright fraud.

But the way science is peer reviewed and the way it is published is at best antiquated. A research paper must be published by a for-profit journal, or at least a journal that must cover it's costs, and many papers are hidden behind a pay wall; you have to buck up to read and critique them. And space is limited, so papers must pass the editor and the peer reviewer, who may have their own agenda and ax to grind. So many excellent bits of work never see the light of day, or see it and are dismissed because they do not have the "prestige" of peer review and journal publication. And once published it may be protected from unwanted scrutiny by a pay wall.

And remember, science is funded largely by government or big foundations, or corporate interests, and the money from these groups overwhelmes the puny financial benefits from those actually looking to find the truth. How much does Nature make from readers as opposed to advertisers and contributions? I honestly don't know, but I suspect readers are taking a back seat.

Which means that special interests drive the content of the journals. Not that they openly, notoriously drive them, but in the end one does not bite the hand that feeds, and the all-you-can-eat buffet is coming from special interests. So what gets published? Work that benefits the special interest types.

And the biggest special interest is government.

So we have a problem; we could more easily catch fraud or incompetence if more people were reading the papers, yet the trend is to hide - hide data, hide methodology, hide sources. Michael Mann's refusal to give Steve mcKintyre this information led McKintyre to reverse-engineer Mann's methodology to reproduce the "hockey stick" graph. Global warming has been shot through with this; read the CRU e-mails to see how Jones, Mann, Briffa, and the rest of the Gilligan's Island researchers have purposely stonewalled Freedom of Information Act requests, blackmailed journal editors, tampered with data, refused to share, etc.

I myself proved (in my own small way) that more minds are important to the advancement of science. Michael Mann Penn State climate huckster (he belongs in the state pen rather than Penn State) made a splash (yet again) in the mainstream media by co-authoring a paper (Kemp et. al.) claiming that the sea level is rising in North Carolina. Fortunately I was able to see a copy of the paper; it was easy to rebutt to someone who knows anything about rivers and coastlines. http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/warmist_cargo_cult_science_returns.html

Had this been hidden behind a paywall I could never have seen it, and that would mean I would never have been able to make the criticisms necessary to debunk the paper. Anthony Watts kindly supplied the pdf file for it.

The point is, a lot of people could find a lot of problems in the science that a compliant and muckraking journalistic community will advance as fact. It took McKintyre to expose Mann's hockey stick graph because McKintyre was a statistician, not a climatologist, and he knew a pile of steaming horse poop when he saw it, while many of Mann's peers didn't have the expertise to understand what they were seeing. (In the case of the sea level rise paper, I had read an article about Louisiana's "sinking" tidal pools and immediately realized that the same was happening here.) This doesn't mean every criticism is valid, or even worthwhile, but it does mean that a researcher has to defend his work, and the more minds engaged with the research the more likely error or fraud will be detected.

Which is what is alarming about this: a new bill before Congress, the Research Works Act, aims to restrict and minimize the dissemination of research to the general public.

This at a time when public policy is being driven by scientific research, and that research can often be dubious. Now more than ever the public needs to see the work being used to recommend and set policy, and the science needs to be criticized to acertain it's accuracy. Hiding research behind a pay wall of secrecy serves nobody's interest - except the corrupt or incompetent scientists, the publishers, and the government.

Please note that this bill is bipartisan, sponsored by California GOP Rep. Darryl Issa and Dem. Carolyn Malone of New York.

Here is the text of the bill:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h112-3699

To ensure the continued publication and integrity of peer-reviewed research works by the private sector.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ‘Research Works Act’.

SEC. 2. LIMITATION ON FEDERAL AGENCY ACTION.

No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage in any policy, program, or other activity that--

(1) causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher of such work; or

(2) requires that any actual or prospective author, or the employer of such an actual or prospective author, assent to network dissemination of a private-sector research work.

SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.

In this Act:

(1) AUTHOR- The term ‘author’ means a person who writes a private-sector research work. Such term does not include an officer or employee of the United States Government acting in the regular course of his or her duties.

(2) NETWORK DISSEMINATION- The term ‘network dissemination’ means distributing, making available, or otherwise offering or disseminating a private-sector research work through the Internet or by a closed, limited, or other digital or electronic network or arrangement.

(3) PRIVATE-SECTOR RESEARCH WORK- The term ‘private-sector research work’ means an article intended to be published in a scholarly or scientific publication, or any version of such an article, that is not a work of the United States Government (as defined in section 101 of title 17, United States Code), describing or interpreting research funded in whole or in part by a Federal agency and to which a commercial or nonprofit publisher has made or has entered into an arrangement to make a value-added contribution, including peer review or editing. Such term does not include progress reports or raw data outputs routinely required to be created for and submitted directly to a funding agency in the course of research.

end

According to Michael Eisen:

http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=807

"In 2008, under bipartisan pressure from Congress to ensure that all Americans would be able to access the results of taxpayer-funded biomedical research, the US National Institutes of Health instituted a Public Access Policy:

- The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. To help advance science and improve human health, the Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication.

The policy has provided access for physicians and their patients, teachers and their students, policymakers and the public to hundreds of thousands of taxpayer-funded studies that would otherwise have been locked behind expensive publisher paywalls, accessible only to a small fraction of researchers at elite and wealthy universities.

The policy has been popular – especially among disease and patient advocacy groups fighting to empower the people they represent to make wise healthcare decision, and teachers educating the next generation of researchers and caregivers."

[...]

"Several people have commented that the language of the bill I quoted refers to “private sector work”, thinking that this means it does not refer to work funded by the US Government. This term is defined in the bill as:

The term `private-sector research work’ means an article intended to be published in a scholarly or scientific publication, or any version of such an article, that is not a work of the United States Government (as defined in section 101 of title 17, United States Code), describing or interpreting research funded in whole or in part by a Federal agency and to which a commercial or nonprofit publisher has made or has entered into an arrangement to make a value-added contribution, including peer review or editing. Such term does not include progress reports or raw data outputs routinely required to be created for and submitted directly to a funding agency in the course of research.

They are using intentionally misleading language to distinguish works funded by the government but carried out by a non-governmental agency as “private sector research”. Thus, under this bill, works funded by the NIH but carried at a University would be “private sector research”.

This language is in there because the US Copyright Act specifically denies copyright protection to works carried out by federal agencies, and the authors of this bill did not want it to be seen as amending Copyright Act, something that would have ensured its defeat."

End excerpt.

So, Michael Mann's work at Penn State would be considered Private Sector, and would be verboten to disseminate.

We need more sunlight, not more shadows. Far too much science has been obscured by hidden agendas, hidden flaws, fudged numbers. It's time to let the sun shine in!

Shame of Congressman Issa!

Atmospheric Acid Reflux

2012-01-16T07:19:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Remember acid rain? That was a prequal to the late 20th century blockbuster "Global Warming" and the upcoming attraction "Ocean Acidification - the sequal". Back in the polyster '70's we were told that human industrial emissions were causing acid to rain from the skies. Well...

http://media.uow.edu.au/news/UOW117161.html

"Satellites showing that nature is responsible for 90% of the earth’s atmospheric acidity shocked researchers from the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, whose findings have just been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Stunned, the scientists approached a team from the University of Wollongong’s Centre of Atmospheric Chemistry (CAC) to confirm what satellite readings were telling them."

[...]

"“The modelling shows, particularly, that natural forest emissions have been highly underestimated. Our forest areas are producing more formic acid than we ever thought,” she said.

Dr Murphy said the unexpected results might well mean forests are responsible for most of the acidity in rainwater in areas other than highly-polluted inner-cities."

End excerpt.

Sooooo...

Ronald Reagan was right when he blamed trees for air pollution. And it also suggests that we have a healthier biosphere than previous; mankind is forever planting trees, and we now have lots of them in places like the Great Plains where previously nothing but grass and scrub grew. Ever see a tree grow in the desert? Yet Las Vegas has them.

Al Gore wrote one sorry poem http://mynorthwest.com/index.php?nid=76&sid=255563 in which he speaks of an acid sea:

Vapors rise aso
Fever settles on an acid sea
Neptune's bones dissolve

Now, I don't know about an acid SEA (actually, yes I do; the sea is alkaline, not acidic, and considerably so; ph is between 7.5 and 8.4, solidly alkaline - if Neptunes bones dissolve it's through lack of vitamin D) but we know who to blame for an acid sky. Curse those evil trees!

It makes one wonder; if Man is responsible for a scant 10% of atmospheric acidification, how much is he responsible for rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels? The main station measuring atmospheric CO2 is at Mauna Loa, an ACTIVE VOLCANO. And the rise in CO2 levels is universal, and not higher in industrial areas when measured. It also seems to be consistent, meaning it has risen steadily, and not in the jumpy start and stop fashion one would expect in an industrializing world.

Interestingly enough, the paleontological record suggests that carbon dioxide levels rise in the Earth's atmosphere AFTER a warming period; sometimes as long after as 800 years. Strangely enough, the Little Ice Age was just about 800 years ago...

Iran Closing in on Nukes

2012-01-16T05:55:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

When the United States dropped the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they were dropping the last bombs they had available; the supply of nuclear material was exhausted. Fortunately, the American government had been quite closed-mouthed about the whole matter, and the Soviets believed we had more weapons than we actually did; in the critical time between the dropping of those bombs and our production of more of them, the Russians hesitated to act. The Soviet Union had the entire Red Army poised on the doorstep of Europe, and they could have invaded at any time. They were stopped out of fear of America's horrible super weapon. For a time that weapon did not exist, but they didn't know that.

What is the lesson here? If a nation has a nuclear program, and has the time to work at it, then they should wait to test until they have enough fissile material to build several bombs, enough to built test weapons and still have some reserve. The test is but a formal declaration of their abilities.

I have little doubt Iran has a nuclear weapon.

John Bolton thinks so, too. Bolton, speaking with Aaron Klein, argues that Iran is much closer to having a weapon than the one year estimate by the U.N. inspectors. http://kleinonline.wnd.com/audio/#

According to Bolton:

"Continued Bolton: “They’ve got, by publicly available information from the International Atomic Energy Agency, enough low-enriched uranium that if enriched up to weapons grade would be enough for four weapons.”

“So they’ve got more work to do, but they are already well on their way,”

End excerpt.

Completing enrichment is not that difficult - if you have the means of enriching in the first place. And to have enough for four weapons means you can have your yellowcake and eat it, too. Testing really only requires one weapon (if successful) and then they will still have three to play with and enjoy.

But, I hear people say, North Korea tried to test a bomb and the silly thing just fizzled. True. But that is in the nature of the type of device involved. North Korean nukes are not uranium devices but are plutonium based. Plutonium is much more difficult to work with. First off, it is literally the most toxic substance imaginable, and for the technical people to avoid poisoning themselves is a challenge in itself. But then, it is, like nitroglycerine is in conventional explosives, too atomically active for easy handling. Plutonium is largely an artificial element (largely but not entirely; it can sometimes be found in the Earth's crust, albeit quite rarely) made inside a nuclear reactor. The nucleus of plutonium contains 94 protons in the nucleus, but it contains 150 neutrons. It's what is called a transuranium element, because the biggest atom that remains stable is uranium (neptonium spontaneously decays in nature, and plutonium isn't a whole lot better.) Uranium 235 is 92 and 143, by comparison. What that means is that plutonium is more atomically unstable, and that means it has a more efficient decay. Translated into layman's terms it goes off easier and the chain reaction has greater speed. Now, this may sound like a boon to a nuclear bomb, but, just like nitroglycerine it goes off too easy, making the reaction proceed prematurely. Remember, nuclear fission works like dominoes, with each atomic decay triggering the next in line. If this proceeds too slowly the reaction fizzles out, if too quickly it dampens, failing to start the chain reaction. (Try starting a charcoal fire with gasoline; you get a big "whoosh" and the coals fail to light.) Nitroglycerine was so unstable it killed the guy who invented it, and was only useful when it was adulterated with cotton or clay.

Plutonium is like that. The reaction is much faster than with uranium, and it tends to "splooge" by not moving all at once, so the energy goes out one point and the big bang you are looking for simply doesn't happen. The easier triggering mechanism for uranium do not work with plutonium. Plutonium must be detonated with an implosion, one that happens at the exact same instant around the entire sphere of material. If one of the detonating charges is even marginally out of phase with the rest the plutonium will just sit there. The energy has to hit at once.

North Korea can't get enriched uranium; it doesn't have the ability to acquire the centrifuges capable of processing their raw uranium ore into weapons-grade material. But the old Soviets helped them build nuclear reactors that could use low-grade uranium, and they assisted them in developing the industry necessary to process that into plutonium. According to FAS:

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/nuke/index.html

" North Korea maintains uranium mines with an estimated four million tons of exploitable high-quality uranium ore. Information on the state and quality of their mines is lacking, but it is estimated that the ore contains approximately 0.8% extractable uranium. In the mid-1960s, it established a large-scale atomic energy research complex in Yongbyon and trained specialists from students who had studied in the Soviet Union. Under the cooperation agreement concluded between the USSR and the DPRK, a nuclear research center was constructed near the small town of Yongbyon. In 1965 a Soviet IRT-2M research reactor was assembled for this center. From 1965 through 1973 fuel (fuel elements) enriched to 10 percent was supplied to the DPRK for this reactor.

In the 1970s it focused study on the nuclear fuel cycle including refining, conversion and fabrication. In 1974 Korean specialists independently modernized Soviet IRT-2M research reactor in the same way that other reactors operating in the USSR and other countries had been modernized, bringing its capacity up to 8 megawatts and switching to fuel enriched to 80 percent. Subsequently, the degree of fuel enrichment was reduced. In the same period the DPRK began to build a 5 MWe research reactor, what is called the "second reactor." In 1977 the DPRK concluded an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], allowing the latter to inspect a research reactor which was built with the assistance of the USSR.

The North Korean nuclear weapons program dates back to the 1980s. In the 1980s, focusing on practical uses of nuclear energy and the completion of a nuclear weapon development system, North Korea began to operate facilities for uranium fabrication and conversion. It began construction of a 200 MWe nuclear reactor and nuclear reprocessing facilities in Taechon and Yongbyon, respectively, and conducted high-explosive detonation tests. In 1985 US officials announced for the first time that they had intelligence data proving that a secret nuclear reactor was being built 90 km north of Pyongyang near the small town of Yongbyon. The installation at Yongbyon had been known for eight years from official IAEA reports. In 1985, under international pressure, Pyongyang acceded to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). However, the DPRK refused to sign a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an obligation it had as a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

End excerpt.

So North Korea has the raw materials and the equipment to make plutonium. But a plutonium bomb is much more difficult; a uranium bomb is little more than enriched uranium and a gun that fires a uranium bullet into it.

That was why the U.S. bombed TWO Japanese cities; Fat Man, which was dropped on Hiroshima, was a uranium bomb, while Little Boy was plutonium. We needed to field test both devices.

But it is not 1945, and with computers and modern materials it is much easier to make a mushroom. The Manhattan Project had far less to work with; they didn't even have centrifuges, so had to pick the fissile material out of u238 atom by atom using a magnet. The computer had just been invented, and these were punch-card behemoths capable of bytes per hour. The most capable electronic devices used vacuum tubes.

The Iranians are way ahead of the Manhattan Project. They know it was done, and with technology inferior to what they currently have. Thanks to Pakistan's A.Q. Khan they have a working blueprint for a prototype. Literally, the only thing holding them back is the processing. And Russia has been aiding them, with uranium, with "dual use" equipment, with everything they need to process U235.

They'll test when they have enough material for multiple bombs - then they become untouchable.

Once they have such a weapon they will rule the region. They can nuke an Israeli city and there won't be anything anybody can do about it save Israel. They can theoretically launch an EMP strike on the United States, bringing the entire country to it's knees. They can threaten the Sunni neighbors in the region with atomic destruction. Nobody will dare go into Iran once they have the bomb.

What would have happened had Iran had a bomb during the Iran-Iraq war? It may have saved us the time, money, and trouble of the invasion of Iraq, but a smoldering hole where Baghdad now resides and a radioactive cloud blowing through the Middle East is not an optimal solution. Iran has exported terrorism through the world. Iran is not stable in terms of ambitions or goals. And we will have to become Iran's eternal babysitter, forever pointing nukes at her to keep the crazy Ayatollahs from nuking their enemies.

What about the oil and gas pipeline through Georgia? The Russians invaded Georgia because of the pipeline, because it cut them - and their Iranian allies - out of the circuit. Would Iran simply blow Tbilisi to smithereens? Probably so. Will they nuke Armenia because it is Christian? Who is going to stop them?

And what about, say, American military bases, or aircraft carriers? Would a U.S. President order the deaths of millions of Iranians for a limited strike on the American military with Iranian nukes? The Iranians could theoretically take out an entire battle group in the Arabian Sea with a nuke. Will we retaliate by nuking Tehran? Would American Liberals stand for that?

You know the answer.

And don't forget; America is not the only nation vulnerable to EMP; what is to prevent an EMP attack on, say Saudi Arabia? The U.S. will be impotent to act, because nobody is going to tolerate our use of nuclear weapons on Iran for such an action. Maybe, just maybe if they hit the U.S., but not if they hit an erstwhile ally. And that would disrupt international trade, and the economies of the Western World would grind to a halt...

No. Better we stop them here and now. Unfortunately, we have the most juvenile and sophomoric man to ever occupy the Oval Office in charge, and HE certainly wants no part of any action against his Islamic brothers.

The world is blundering into world war. Failing to address this problem of Iran only makes matters far, far worse.

Obama Weakens the Military

2012-01-15T06:31:00.000-08:00

By Alan Caruba

“Si vis pacem, para bellum.” If you want peace, plan for war. The adage is attributed to the 4th or 5th century Latin author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus’s tract De Re Militari book 3. This fundamental wisdom is being ignored by President Obama, one of two recent Commanders-in-Chief who never spent a day in uniform, let alone under fire.

In a recent American Thinker commentary by Jim Yardley, he said, “It is apparent that the president, in developing his strategy, used the same extensive knowledge, his superior intellect, and worldly wealth of experience that he brought to his strategy for his $800-billion stimulus, his strategy for providing cost-free health care to millions of Americans, and his strategy for using ‘smart diplomacy’ to defuse not spots around the world.”

Perhaps receiving the Nobel Peace Prize barely months into his first year as President has convinced Obama that he is the man to get all our enemies to join hands and sing Kumbaya. Obama accepted the prize that has gone to other seekers of peace like Yassir Arafat, founder of the Palestinian Liberation Organization or co-winners, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore. The IPCC and Gore have led the greatest hoax of the modern era, global warming, and Arafat rejected every effort at peace offered by Israel by going back on his word and using terrorism to achieve his goals.

There is no question that the announced cuts to the U.S. military budget are, in part, the result of the domestic run up of debt and borrowing the followed the financial crisis of 2008; itself the result of bad government policies regarding the wholesale granting of mortgages to people who could not afford homes, then bundling those bad mortgages and selling them as assets to the banks.

While the economy is showing some small signs of regaining its footing, the government is still borrowing forty cents of every dollar it spends and has shown no real intent to reduce spending.

While this is occurring we have a President who has made clear his antipathy of the role of the military. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial noted that “The Pentagon shouldn’t be immune to fiscal scrutiny, yet this Administration has targeted defense from its earliest days and has kept on squeezing. The White House last year settled with Congress on $450 billion in military budget cuts through 2012, on top of the $350 billion in weapons programs killed earlier,” adding “Taken altogether, the budget could shrink by over 30% in the next decade.”

Following a 1993 attempt to destroy the World Trade Center Osama bin Laden, a still largely obscure Islamic fanatic, declared war on the United States in 1996. In 2001, al Qaeda succeeded, killing nearly 3,000. To underestimate the intent of his successors to destroy the nation would be a grave error. To think that his assassination along with the killing of a relative handfull of other al Qaeda leaders has ended the threat is wishful thinking.

To think that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq will not at some point result in the possible breakup of that nation or the withdrawal from Afghanistan will rid us of the threat of Islamic fanaticsim is still more wishful thinking.

Right now and ever since 1979, the threat of Iran is the largest facing the Middle East and the West. Its leaders have never made a secret of its intent to acquire nuclear weapons, to threaten all other Middle Eastern nations, as well as Europe and America is on a par with the threat the rise of Nazism posed in Germany in the 1930s.

After World War Two, America emerged as a superpower and it took on the role of global policeman. No military prescience predicted the attack on South Korea by North Korea, nor was our strategy in Vietnam successful. We had earlier failed to anticipate the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor despite efforts to keep out of the war that had begun in 1939.

The lesson that should have been learned is that overwhelming military strength contributes greatly to avoiding wars.

President Obama is ignoring that. It is not, however, to say that he is taking Iran lightly. In early January, thousands of U.S. troops were deployed to Israel and senior U.S. military sources say they anticipate they will remain through the year. Obstensively, they are there to participate in joint U.S.-Israeli war games. They will be joined by a U.S. aircraft carrier and, as we know, we have a task force in place in the event the Iranians try to close the Strait of Hormuz through which passes one sixth of the world’s oil supplies.

The U.S. could be energy independent in a decade if the Administration and Congress would remove the obstacles to accessing our enormous reserves of coal, oil and natural gas, but that remains unlikely as this is written.

The decision to reduce the size of our military to 490,000 troops from 570,000 could not come at a worse time. Air and naval assets, we’re told, will be maintained. Holding evacuated or captured territory requires “boots on the ground.” The decision of former President Bush to “surge” in Iraq by increasing troop strength turned a potential defeat into a success. A war-weary America and the current Iraqi regime wanted us out and we are out.

Meanwhile Egypt that underwent “the Arab Spring” has fallen into the hands of a militant, anti-American and anti-Israel Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey has joined the Islamic frenzy, the future of Syria remains unknown, so anyone who thinks that military action anywhere, but especially in Iran, is not a real potential is not paying attention.

President Obama’s claim that “the tide of war is receding” is likely to rank with British PM Neville Chamberlains claim of “peace in our time” after a visit with Hitler.

It is wishful thinking or worse. It is the deliberate effort to ignore the dangers in the world. Shifting military personnel and assets to Asia acknowledges China’s rising power, but U.S. military leaders have warned against a war in Asia for decades. It is doubtful the Chinese want one.

What is not in doubt is that this is the wrong time to reduce our military strength and capabilities. We did that after World War One and paid a price for it. President Obama’s policies put us in the same peril.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The mutilation of the body, the mutilation of the mind

2012-01-15T06:28:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

In regards to Jack Kemp's post about the madness of gender choice http://tbirdblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/teaching-gender-confusion.html I would like to make the following observations:

Samuel R. Delany's 1976 novel "Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia" deals with this topic in depth. The characters are inhabitants of Neptune's large moon Triton, living in a city with artificial gravity and a nuclear substitute for a sun. http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Triton_(novel)

The Tritonians believe that the body and mind are malleable, and they stretch them far beyond their elastic limits. They recognize no less than 9 sexes, and those sexes can be either straight or gay. The novel follows the life of Bron Helstrom, who is a disturbed individual, who finds life on his adopted world too much for him. In despair over lost love and confusion over the purpose of his existence, Bron undergoes a sex change halfway through the novel, and ends up even worse than before. His mental confusion and suffering increase as he cannot find his bearings in a world that has no concrete boundaries. Changing sex simply costs him his old friends, leaving him totally isolated in the end - in a society that is completely accepting of his choice.

This world is full of madness, with all manner of bizarre body modifications, and strange cults devoted to even stranger activities. One such cult parades the streets and chants "the mutilation of the body, the mutilation of the mind" which is the theme of the entire book. Delany shows where this gender choice business will lead.

One cannot have absolute freedom to do as one pleases; there are constraints built in by God, or the universe if you prefer. We need those constraints, and in fact want them, for they give us our bearings. without them we find madness and the whirlwind. That is the theme of Delany's book. I thought it would be appropo to bring it up here. Delany does a fine job illustrating the abject catastrophic failure of postmodern Leftist notions of freedom.

This also brings up the question of nature or nurture; the Left believes they can choose to violate the laws of nature with impunity. It is the old God Complex; they are the self-willed, the prime movers. We should be able to choose to be what we wish. Oddly enough, they make this argument often in the context of "I am what I am", saying that we choose to be what we are by nature. It's the oddest argument; they say that sex roles are artificial, and yet they claim that people are immutably one way or another. Being gay, they say, is biological and cannot be overcome, yet they argue that the gay person should be free to choose to be gay, to look gay, to act in accordance with a stereotypical subculture.

The notion that God made a man male and that he has a role as a man that comes from outside of himself is anathema to the new castrati. Yet they argue that a man is what he feels.

Well, I have often felt rich, young, and handsome, but that doesn't make it so. Do we redefine the meaning of rich, young, and handsome? Is it my fundamental right to be in that happy condition? No. The terms have a meaning, and I either am or am not in accordance with any of the three. (Well, none actually.) I cannot will myself in the Nietzchean fashion to be that which I am not. Yet the Left is trying to say that we can simply negate reality, choose the reality we wish. Fine and dandy - except it simply doesn't work.

A people who stop believing in reality will stop being a people. It's a civilization buster.

"The mutiliation of the mind, the mutilation of the body".

Teaching Gender Confusion

2012-01-15T05:45:00.000-08:00

Jack Kemp

Fay Voshell has has written a very scholarly piece at American Thinker on what the left is trying to teach our children under the guise of "anti-bullying training." Most notable is a shocking video Ms. Voshell links to of 4th graders in Oakland, CA, being instructed by an outside consultant who tells them they can pick their own gender. Although the article has an embedded link to the video, I will also include the URL address here.

It can be seen at http://www.massresistance.com/docs/gen/11b/CA_trans_elementary/index2.html

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/the_abolition_of_gender.html#ixzz1jWtuQnRC
The Abolition of Gender
By Fay Voshell

The far left in Europe and America has attained the same phantasmagoric and orgiastic repudiation of reason as their predecessors, the leaders of the French Revolution.

The hopes of egalitarianism embraced by the leaders of the French Revolution included eliminating real and perceived inequities by abolishing class distinctions, which project included killing off the aristocracy and clergy while de-Christianizing society. They hoped by so doing to begin society anew.
However, in their wildest dreams, none of the leaders of the mobs ever advocated the elimination of gender as a means of establishing liberté, egalité et fraternité.

But the addled progeny of the Revolution, here and abroad, are seeking to do just that. The hope appears to be that the end of discrimination will be achieved by rendering the sexes fungible -- or better yet, nonexistent. The elimination of gender distinction and the establishment of androgyny are to usher in communal utopia.

For example, the most recent Council of Europe convention on gender has defined gender as a purely social construct. Eliminating biological distinctions as the determinative factor of gender, the Council has redefined gender as meaning "the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men."

Lest it be thought the Council's definition of gender is a mere aberration, its "advanced" sociological philosophies advocating the abolition of gender are to be found in academia, both here and abroad.
For example, Magnus Hirschfield, author of the The Sexual Revolution opines:

[I]n the bourgeois, capitalist societies of the West which are dedicated to individual freedom, the sexual revolution continues. The right to sexual self-determination is considered as important as ever, and, indeed, various sexual liberation groups are working hard to extend it.

Maya Andrea Gonzalez of the University of California earnestly exhorts in her treatise, "Communization and the Abolition of Gender," in rhetoric typical of anti-gender fanatics:

Since the revolution as communization must abolish all divisions within social life, it must also abolish gender relations - not because gender is inconvenient or objectionable, but because it is part of the totality of relations that daily reproduce the capitalist mode of production. Gender, too, is constitutive of capital's central contradiction, and so gender must be torn asunder in the process of the revolution.
In contrast to Hirschfield and Gonzalez, Patrick Fagan, family scholar at the U.S.-based Family Research Council, declares that defining gender as a mere social construct is "evidence of thought so divorced from reality as to be a form of mental illness."
Well, yes.

Alas, the mental illness has metastasized, establishing colonies of the mentally deranged in North America, including the California Teachers' Association, which, as reported by the Christian Examiner, held a conference during which the association's conference presenters and program received materials advocating "gender liberation."

According to the materials, male-female distinctions must be eliminated in order to "liberate" children from unnecessary stereotypes about what it means to be male or female. To be absolutely clear, the anti-genderists are not seeking "equal rights," but obliteration of the distinctions between male and female.
For example, the conference literature included this instruction on "gender etiquette":
"Please do not assume anyone's gender, even people you may have met in the past. A person's external appearance may not match their internal gender identity."
"You cannot know the gender or sex of someone by their physical body, voice, appearance or mannerisms."
Pay attention to a person's purposeful gender expression. We consider it polite to ask: "What pronoun do you prefer?" or "How do you identify?" before using pronouns or gendered words for anyone.
One way of acknowledging the needs of all people is to designate restrooms as gender neutral.
"Respectful allies, who learn from and with everyone and then educate others, are important for successful gender liberation."

Each of us can decide for ourselves in which bathroom we belong.
It appears that the powerful group of leaders within the CTA wants to brainwash children into believing that gender neutrality (androgyny) is the new ideal for society.
Maybe our children will learn the new androgyny in ways similar to those being advocated in British Columbia, where a gender coach recently was videotaped earnestly assuring elementary schoolchildren that they can be any sex they choose. The video is found here.

What does all this madness, now being inserted into our public schools, mean?

Quite frankly, if our society accepts gender redefinition as a merely societal construct, it means the end of civilization as we know it -- not mere reformation or transformation, but the abolition of civilization itself.

The entire social construct of any given society is based on gender distinction -- man and woman. The differences in gender are the first and most essential ways in which human beings relate to one another: mother and father, husband and wife; brother and sister, aunt and uncle, daughter-in-law, brother-in law -- just to name a few.

The beginning of individuation is gender; the elimination of it ensures the destruction of individuality and absorption into an amorphous, indistinct communality.

Elimination of gender distinctions means entering a Brave New World in which everybody belongs to everybody else, and all belong to the state. It is to achieve the disappearance of the "other" that complements us. It is to attempt to absorb all of humanity into the All by eradication of distinctions.

How ironic that those who purport to desire diversity actually are seeking the abolition of diversity at the most fundamental level. That is because they favor the communal versus the individual. The elimination of individuality starts with the elimination of sex, and the new unisex identity is always an indicator of tyranny, as faceless and sexless masses are more easily manipulated by an all-powerful state. It is notable, for instance, that Mao Tse Tung's blue-suited masses were without obvious sexual distinction.

The great philosopher/theologian C.S. Lewis, in his masterpiece The Abolition of Man, pointed out that constant debunking of the foundational pillars of Western society portends a future in which the values of the majority of citizens are dictated by a tiny group of people who believe themselves to be able to infallibly see through any system of absolute morality and reality and to debunk it. That they themselves are ruled only by their own arbitrary system of morality is not apparent to them. At the end, Lewis predicts, not even the controllers will be recognizably human. They will be like robots, and the abolition of man will have been completed.

He writes, "If any one age really attains ... the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger."
Lewis predicted:

The power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please. [T]he manmolders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state ... They are men who have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what 'Humanity' shall henceforth mean. 'Good' and 'bad' applied to them are words without content.
As are the words "male and female."

A dogmatic belief in the objective (and ineradicable) assignation of gender is necessary to the very idea of what it means to be a human being. If the anti-genderists succeed, the final debunking of what it means to be human will have been completed, and the word "human" made a mere abstraction onto which any meaning can be projected. Man's final conquest will have proved to be the abolition of Man. The descent of society into madness will have been assured.

How ironic to read the constant ridicule heaped on Jews and Christians who are accused of naiveté at best and insanity at worst for believing the reality of the great creation story when it proclaims that "male and female created He them."

Proponents of the abolition of gender remind one of the emperor who wore no clothes. They are deluded by fatuous intellection and dystopian phantasms that defy rationality.

It is high time rational observers, like the little boy in the story about the emperor, proclaim that the arbiters of education are out of their minds.

Economic Darwinism or Free Markets at Canada Free Press

2012-01-14T06:20:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

We often use terms while not really having a solid definition. One such is Capitalism. It has come to mean in the conservative mind free enterprise, and anyone who believes that government should not own the means of production is called a capitalist. But that's not true, and never has been; tBhe Nazis did not own the means of production, but Fascist economics was a form of socialism nonetheless. By the broad definition of Capitalism employed in modern times the Nazis were disciples of Adam Smith.

And that broad definition suits the Left just fine; they want to tar the Right with charges of being money-grubbing oppressors. But there is a huge difference between the crony capitalism of modern America and the free market standard on which this nation was founded. That is why I cringe when I hear so many conservatives howl over the ad by Newt Gingrich's PAC about Romney and "Vulture Capitalism"; it's as though an attack on bad behavior or even on an unsavory though legal and perhaps even necessary practice is somehow an attack on the free market. The free market and Capitalism are not the same thing.

I discuss this issue at Canada Free Press.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/43889

I ask in my article; what is the difference between Bain Capital and George Soros? We cannot exonorate one and condemn the other. Soros is everything that is wrong with the modern economic system.

Also, implied but not stated in the article is the question of why so many of the truly successful Capitalists are so left wing; that has been a question for the ages. I think you will have the answer if you read the piece.

The "Brave New World" of Obama looks like the fearful old world of the KGB

2012-01-14T06:01:00.000-08:00

Jack Kemp

Aaron Klein is a distinguished investigative journalist. Here is an excerpt from a recent column on the statist control Cass Sunstein - and thus, Barack Obama - want to exercise over Americans. Frankly, it sounds like the KGB of the old Soviet Union.

Here are both the link and a few quotes. I suggest you read the entire piece.

http://kleinonline.wnd.com/2012/01/12/obama-czar-proposed/

Obama czar proposed government should ‘infiltrate’ social network sites, chat rooms, message boards.
Posted on January 12, 2012 at 8:39 AM EST

By Aaron Klein
Just prior to his appointment as President Obama’s so-called regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein wrote a lengthy academic paper suggesting the government should “infiltrate” social network websites, chat rooms and message boards.
Such “cognitive infiltration,” Sunstein argued, should be used to enforce a U.S. government ban on “conspiracy theorizing.”

SECTION OMITTED

Sunstein said government agents “might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.”

Sunstein defined a conspiracy theory as “an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.”
Some “conspiracy theories” recommended for ban by Sunstein include:

“The theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud.”

“The view that the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”

“The 1996 crash of TWA flight 800 was caused by a U.S. military missile.”

“The Trilateral Commission is responsible for important movements of the international economy.”

“That Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by federal agents.”

“The moon landing was staged and never actually occurred.”
Sunstein allowed that “some conspiracy theories, under our definition, have turned out to be true.”

What is Truth? The Corruption of Science

2012-01-14T05:58:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

According to this piece in the Financial Times, the CRU scandal is hardly unique in Britain; the whole scientific establishment is festering in fraud and dishonesty.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/bc6f7204-3d1f-11e1-8129-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1jLldiDap

From the article:

"UK research is plagued with misconduct, according to a survey of 2,700 scientists by the British Medical Journal. It found that 13 per cent had first-hand knowledge of UK-based researchers deliberately altering or fabricating data, while 6 per cent were aware of misconduct that had not been properly investigated.

The BMJ released the results at a conference in London where experts pushed for stronger action to tackle what they said was a problem being ignored by many universities, hospitals and other scientific institutions.

“The BMJ has been told of junior academics being advised to keep concerns to themselves to protect their careers, being bullied into not publishing their findings, or having their contracts terminated when they spoke out,” she added."

End Excerpt.

Yet Britain is one of the cornerstones of climate research, and we are told we must completely reorganize Western Civilization based on science coming out of Britain. If much of that science is garbage, falsehoods, why should we take them seriously?

But then, we have been told repeatedly to ignore the Climategate e-mails and accept the word of "independent investigators" rather than our own lying eyes.

This is what happens when huge amounts of government money begin flowing into science. When research was catch-as-catch-can and results mattered in terms of profitability to a private investor or the dollars from a foundation were limited, there was an incentive to do good science. Not now; there is a huge amount of money involved, and the government doesn't want honest results but rather results they can use. Catastrophism backed by science is a result that works very well for governments, because they can panic their own people into line, get more tax revenue to deal with the "crisis", and gather power to themselves. The truth doesn't matter. And the whores in the scientific community will happily prostitute their research for the money and prestige.

Much is made about "Big Oil" money funding "denier" research, but Big Oil is a piker next to the gargantuan resourced that can be poured into science by governments. That is why I always laugh at the fools who accuse Exxon Mobile; why is government the holder of purer motives than an oil company? They have a lot more money, and the power of law, too. If you suspect Exxon-Mobile, you really should suspect the IPCC.

But you can't kid a kidder. The smarter of this group understands this fact, and the stupider of them will never understand.

In the end, science has become a call girl, a lady of the evening. Global Warming is the most egregious example, but there are plenty of others. We've had so many scares; alar, dioxin, mercury, now fracking for oil causing earthquakes. I could compose a list, but it would take up too much of our mutual time.

Whatever happened to the search for truth?

Two thousand years ago a government shill made the perfect case for post-modern scientific corruption. During the trial of Jesus Christ, Roman governor Pontius Pilate famously asked "what is truth?" It was not a question exactly, but a statement of moral relativism. Pilate, like government types before him and like his progeny into the present day, believed there is no such thing as Truth, but that all is relative to the observer. Truth is what the party says it is. If the Emperor said he had conquered Britain a half hour after leaving the city of Rome then he conquered Britain (Caligula, who pardoned Pilate after the death of Tiberius - who had recalled Pilate for a massacre of Samaritans - did that, going to the outskirts of the city and grabbing local farmers as "captured warriors". He then re-entered the city to a Triumph, with the public clamouring "all hail the Conqueror of Britain.) Governments don't like Truth, because it gets in the way of their actions. They prefer sweet lies, lies that can advance their agenda. Nothing has really changed.

And Britain, moribund by the welfare state, has more to gain and lose than most. The entire post-WWII era has been built on a lie in "Great" Britain, and deep down I suspect most people know that. These little socialist games they have played cannot be justified by reality, and nobody really believes this is an adequate substitute for the Britain of old, but the ruling class doesn't want the Britain of old, but rather a compliant, sheep-like people. They want Engsoc. They have to pretend to be that which they are not. And so science has to be corrupted to justify the continuation of the failed experiment that is Britain. Should their grip falter for one moment the public will howl "the Emperor has no clothes" and everything the socialists have built over 65 years will collapse. So new scares, new causes, new crises must be invented. Environmentalism is a big one, and Global Warming is her crown jewel.

Michael Crichton touched on this in his discussion of the "state of fear"; Crichton argued that the ruling classes in the West maintain their power by keeping the public lathered up with crises and fear-mongering. They have replaced the traditional controls of bygone eras; honor, faith, patriotism, with the culture of fear and crisis. The Universities and think tanks are the wombs of these endless panic attacks, hatching up crazier and crazier things for people to be frightened about. A symbiotic media takes up the cause, promoting the "science" to achieve political ends. Governments then take the ball, passing laws and organizing against emergencies that do not exist. The populace gets so frightened that people actually take their own lives in despair, yet the elites, the ruling classes, simply take it to the next level, or adopt the newest fright fest.

Western culture contains the seeds of it's own destruction. The Enlightenment puffed up the intellectuals, who have believed in their divine right to rule ever since. That reign comes from their official "expertise" and the reverence accorded them. That reverence stemmed from the value of what they were doing, of the miraculous wonders science and technology wrought. But now science is becoming degraded, a tool to the ruling class itself. I suspect we are reaching the peak in science, and will find in the future fewer and fewer breakthroughs as doctrine trumps Truth.

Nietzche believed that, and while I think Nietzche was an ass, I suspect he's right in this instance. Eventually science will question itself, become so cynical that it will no longer believe there is such a thing as truth. When that happens our civilization will be finished.

What is Truth? Increasingly, it is what the Party says it is.

No Melting in Antarctica 1978 to Present

2012-01-14T05:18:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

No significant change in Antarctic snowmelt. Seems that claims by the Global Warming crowd are again proven specious.

From Geophysical Research Letters:

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2011GL050207.shtml"

Surface snowmelt is widespread in coastal Antarctica. Satellite-based microwave sensors have been observing melt area and duration for over three decades. However, these observations do not reveal the total volume of meltwater produced on the ice sheet. Here we present an Antarctic melt volume climatology for the period 1979–2010, obtained using a regional climate model equipped with realistic snow physics. We find that mean continent-wide meltwater volume (1979–2010) amounts to 89 Gt y−1 with large interannual variability (σ = 41 Gt y−1). Of this amount, 57 Gt y−1 (64%) is produced on the floating ice shelves extending from the grounded ice sheet, and 71 Gt y−1 in West-Antarctica, including the Antarctic Peninsula. We find no statistically significant trend in either continent-wide or regional meltwater volume for the 31-year period 1979–2010."

How can anyone claim the globe is warming if there is no increase in melting on the continent that is completely ice-covered?

Rain, Rain, Go Away

2012-01-13T08:47:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Just a quick thought on the Yellow Peril scandal. Recently, some Marines ended up with, uh, egg on their faces when a video of them whizzing on some dead Taliban surfaced on Youtube.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/12/marines-urinating-taliban-video_n_1202139.html Now, far be it from me to judge, after all, this is a common practice in San Francisco, and we have yet to hear from Nancy Pelosi, but I do think that Natural Law requires that Man use his head, and these Marines surely confused which organ to employ. Another Marine will be stuck with the messy chore of moving these soiled corpses after all(and this time it IS pronounced corpses, Mr. Obama). Befouling the bodies simply discommodes another soldier. Urine is for toilets, or for bushes, at any rate - not for swimming pools nor for dead bodies. Of course if you happen to swing that way...

As Jerry Seinfeld put it "not that there's anything wrong with that!" Strange how Liberals demand we tolerate such practices when they constitute a "lifestyle" but are enraged when engaged in by Marines long denied a lavatory.

That said, I really don't see what the fuss is about. The Taliban in Guantanamo Bay regularly fling poo at American guards, and those guards are alive and well. http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/14/2269589/waste-wars-captives-weaponize.html

Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, even if the sauce is a disagreeable bodily fluid. The Taliban cannot expect us to treat them any better than they treat us. If they intend to fling their feces at their foe then we can sprinkle their stiffs. Our way is more sanitary, I might add.

And many Taliban find women objectionable. The sexual use of young boys is ubiquitous in Afghanistan, lest the men "dirty" themselves with women.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11217772 If the Taliban think a boy's anus is more sanitary than a woman's sex organs, why should we concern ourselves with a little clean urine?

I wonder what Barney Frank thinks about all this?

Ask Not for Whom the Twinkie Tolls

2012-01-13T06:06:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

What food will survive a nuclear war? What will you be eating thirty years after the end of it all - and enjoying just as much? What is the ultimate enemy of Michelle Obama, the ambrosia of the post-modern gods?

You guessed it - the Twinkie!

Sadly, the perfect food may be no more.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204257504577154402317896574.html

"High fixed costs" are blamed, and by that they mean inflation of ingredients and high labor costs. Interstate Bakery is a union shop.

In the Wall Street Journal article "healthier eating habits" are blamed by the company for the decline of the Twinkie. Balderdash! Only people around Michelle Obama are eating healthier (while the First Lady has probably packed away a ding-dong or two in her lifetime). People can't afford junk food anymore. And that is largely the fault of the government.

The WSJ gets it right:

"is not competitive, primarily due to legacy pension and medical benefit obligations and restrictive work rules"

So, the Unions are killing the food designed to survive armageddon!

This is not something we want to lose. Hostess purchased Dolly Madison a number of years back, and so both brands will be lost if Hostess goes under. (Personally, I was mad at that merger; Dolly Madison had much better fruit pies.)

Perhaps we should take a page from the television show "Jerico". When faced with cancellation, fans of the show sent millions of nuts to ABC, demanding the return of their favorite show (which, I might add, was about a twinkie surviving a nuclear attack, along with other people in a small kANSAS TOWN. The nuts were from a line from the show where the main character repeated Gen. Anthony McAuliffe's memorable reply to the Germans at the Bulge.) Maybe we should buy twinkies and send them to the bakery? If enough come back, maybe they'll find a way to survive? Shoot, they could repackage the ones returned and make a killing.

Girl Scout anti-transgender movement boycotts GS Cookies!

2012-01-13T04:58:00.000-08:00

Jack Kemp

You Go, Girl (Scout Protester)!

A Girl Scout has created a website protesting the national organization's attempt to place so called transgendered biological males into Girl Scout troops. She is calling for...a boycott of Girl Scout Cookies! Yes, she says not to buy them. Her organization is "Honest Girl Scouts" at http://www.honestgirlscouts.com/index.html If any of my readers have small daughters or granddaughters or neices or whomever, go read the site. It talks about the Girl Scouts funding a pro-LBGT agenda and "sexual freedom" between children and adults. It reads like the 1960s hippie movement revised for nine year old - and up - girls.

The Blaze reports that:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/this-girl-scout-is-calling-for-a-cookie-boycott-over-the-inclusion-of-a-transgender-child/

BEGIN QUOTE
A California teen calling for a Girl Scout cookie boycott after the organization accepted a transgender child to a Colorado troop in October.

In an online video posted to YouTube Jan. 3 — and which has since been made private — the teen, wearing a Girl Scout sash, says she’s been a member of the organization for eight years and urges people not to buy the iconic cookies until Girl Scouts agrees to bar transgender members. Though she doesn’t identify herself, the Christian Post reported her name is Taylor and that she’s from Ventura County, Calif.

“I have been taught by Girl Scouts to advocate for my beliefs, and to discover, connect and take action when I see something I want to change in the world,” Taylor says in the eight-minute video. “The problem is, what I want to help change is Girl Scouts.”

“Right now, Girl Scouts of the USA, or GSUSA, is not being honest with us girls, its troops, its leaders, its parents or the American public,” she continues. “Girl Scouts describes itself as an all-girl experience. With that label, families trust that the girls will be in an environment that is not only nurturing and sensitive to girls’ needs, but also safe for girls.”
END OF QUOTE

Taylor, I salute you.

Which Republicans?

2012-01-12T05:45:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Proof that establishment Republicans - and many of the intellectualoids on our side - are completely clueless (or dishonest).

This courtesy of the Federalist Patriot:

"For the past year, the question has been whether Mitt Romney would be acceptable to the Republican party. ... Some pundits continue to dream of a great conservative hope who will enter the race and save us from Romney -- perhaps even at a brokered convention. But the voters have now had two opportunities to speak. Two thirds of voters in New Hampshire said they were satisfied with the field. Romney has won a solid victory there. He succeeded with Tea Party supporters and self-described conservatives. And now Newt Gingrich has offered Romney a gift. By attacking him from the left as a heartless tycoon, he has given Romney the chance to campaign as the defender of capitalism and free markets. ... While it's too early to say the race is sewn up, it is looking very good for Mitt Romney."

Mona Charen

Oh REALLY?

Exactly what voters are Mona discussing?

Are they the 282 voters who wrote in Barack Obama's name on the Republican ballot?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71342.html

Or was it the top write-ins for Ron Paul?

According to Politico:

"The Republican congressman from Texas led all write-ins in the Democratic primary with 2,273, followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 1,808 and and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman at 1,228."

End excerpt.

Perhaps it was all the independents who turned out?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/behind-the-numbers/post/new-hampshire-primary-10-key-exit-poll-results/2012/01/03/gIQAM2oopP_blog.html

"Nearly half of voters in the New Hampshire Republican primary were self-identified independents, and 45 percent of voters were registered as “undeclared.” Both numbers are higher than in competitive GOP contest back to 1996. The independent surge was a boon to Paul and Huntsman. Paul topped the field with 32 percent of self-identified independents, and Huntsman’s 23 percent was more than double his showing among rank and file Republicans. Romney won nearly half of self-identified Republicans, with no other candidate breaking 20 percent."

End excerpt.

Please note that 40% of voters are described as "satisfied" with the Obama policies.

This is important because it shows that New Hampshire was NOT a Republican primary election, but included a large contingent of Democrats who came to tamper with the results. While many of these newly-minted Republicans voted Huntsman or Paul, I have little doubt that many voted for Donna Brazille's choice for the GOP nominee.

From the CBS post-New Hampshire debate analysis:

"BRAZILE: Mitt Romney won tonight because no one touched him -- and for Democrats, you know what? It was good news for us.

KARL: Why is that?

BRAZILE: Because we believe that the weakest candidate is the candidate that the Republicans are not attackin', and that's Mitt Romney.

KARL: Oh, come on.

STEPHANOPOULOS: No, you don't believe that, Donna."

End excerpt.
co
And as for Iowa, the caucuses were lousy with Democrats who reregistered.
http://mynorthwest.com/11/603368/Iowa-Democrat-going-Republican-for-caucus-

Does a fairly liberal cornbelt state, a state that sent Tom Harkin to Washington, really qualify as a barometer for the national mood? Does the liberal northeast qualify? Neither of these are conservative strongholds. New Hampshire used to be fairly solidly GOP (as liberal northeastern states go) but it has been filling with refugees from Massachussetts, Vermont, and other Democrat bastions in recent years. We are NOT getting the will of the core Conservatives, of the Tea Party.

Mona Charen should know better. I suspect that secretly she does.

Party politics works a certain way, and the insiders in the party do not care about actually making changes for the better in America so much as maintaining their comfortable, easy, and priviledged lifestyles. I believe the party chose John McCain in the last election cycle; he was way behind, yet never seemed concerned, and suddenly a fortuitous series of circumstances pushed McCain forward to become the nominee. I strongly suspect that the party told Romney to sit tight, his time will come. Now the old boy's network is honoring their promise to Romney.

Everyone makes out - except the American People.

Now, I will support Romney, moreso than I supported John McCain who delighted in stabbing his friends in the back. But I won't like it. If Romney is president we will have to fight him as much as the Democrats. Remember the Bush presidency, where Bush tried to foist Harriette Myers on us as a Supreme Court Justice? We had to scream bloody murder to get him to do what he should have done in the first place. Remember his attempt to push amnesty? We're going to have all of these problems, and many more, if Romney is elected. And don't forget, we'll have to get him elected first, and I have little doubt the Democrats have all sorts of nasty surprised they'll dig out for Romney. We are going to have to find ways to defend a guy we don't much like.

And money won't flow for a Romney as it would for a better candidate. And enthusiasm will be tempered. And less volunteers will come forward. This will be a pale, dull candidacy; if he wins it will be because everyone hates Obama and not because anyone loves Romney.

There's not much to work with here.

Fracking can’t cause larger quakes

2012-01-11T10:34:00.000-08:00

Ron De Haan

WattsUpwithThat posted an article on hydraulic fracturing. The Ohio quakes are not related to fracking. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/11/dallas-earthquake-not-caused-by-fracking-and-neither-was-the-ohio-quake/

From the article by David Middleton:

"Wow! I woke up Friday morning to news that a 2.0 Md earthquake struck about a mile and a half from my office. I was sleeping at home, about 7 miles from the epicenter, and it didn’t even wake me up. Thirty years as an exploration geophysicist, and I sleep right through my first earthquake!"

[...]

"Now… I have yet to hear any journalists, politicians or college professors link this quake to fracking… But I figure they will. So I’ll just preemptively shoot that bit of junk science down. Fracking can trigger extremely minor earthquakes. A 2.0 Md quake is in the realm of possibilities. However, there aren’t any active wells within a 5 km radius (Davis et al., 1995) of this particular quake."

[...]

"The Oklahoma Geological Survey recently examined (Holland, 2011) the possible relationship between a swarm of micro-quakes and a fracking operation in Garvin County OK. They concluded that the fracking could have triggered the 1.0 to 2.8 Md temblors. However, the quakes were so insignificant that it was almost impossible to precisely locate the hypocenters. The quakes could have been within 5 km of a fracking operation, they could have been small enough to have been triggered by the fracking operation and they occurred right after one fracking operation. However, the area has frequent seismicity of similar magnitude and no other fracking operations in the field’s 60+ year history have been correlated with induced seismicity."

[...]

"You have to get up to more than Md 3.5 before quakes deliver “vibrations similar to the passing of a truck.” The non-palpable seismicity that might result from fracking is less than that of a seismic crew shooting a survey. Fracking can’t cause larger quakes…"

End excerpts.

More Fracking Foolishness

2012-01-11T10:14:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Fracking poses no danger to cause earthquakes, according to this article in Bloomberg Businessweek.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-11/u-k-shale-drilling-won-t-start-dangerous-earthquakes.html

From the article:

"Fracking, as the process has become known, is unlikely to start earthquakes stronger than magnitude 3.3 on the Richter scale, a level that typically causes no damage to property, and most will be around magnitude 2, said Peter Styles, a professor of applied and environmental geophysics at Keele University.

Scientists have also developed models linking the volume of water used during a fracking injection and the scale of earthquake caused, Bernstein & Co. analyst Bob Brackett said in a Jan. 6 note. An injection of 10 million gallons or less is unlikely to cause an earthquake exceeding magnitude 4, he said, citing U.S. Geological Survey geologist Arthur McGarr."

[...]

"“There is much more shale than we thought under Blackpool,” the British Geological Survey’s Stephenson said at the briefing, adding more research remains to be done on the impact of fracking.

The debate over shale drilling in the U.S. and Europe has intensified in recent months following tremors near wastewater disposal sites in Ohio and concerns about water pollution in Pennsylvania. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is studying the effects of fracking on drinking water with an eye on possible nationwide regulations.

Styles said he has examined seismic data from 30 years of coal mining in the English midlands to assess the threat from fracking. The research suggests there is a “low” probability of unconventional gas drilling operations causing major earthquakes, he said."

End excerpt.

That nonsense about the 4.0 Ohio quake being caused by fracking was precisely that.

The Earth can be looked at like a giant tube of toothpaste; squeeze it enough and the paste will move to the side (which will lead to an earthquake at a fault line). But it takes a lot to make that happen. Dams can cause minor tremors thanks to the weight of all that water, and doubtless so can waste water injections into the ground in large enough quantities. But the amount has to be high. Also, the depth of the well matters. The attempt to blame fracking for earthquakes is nothing but an attempt to strangle the fledgeling industry. The Gang Green has carefully laid plans to restrict energy usage, thereby restricting wealth, and to control energy and thus control the population. Shale gas and oil completely disrupts their plans.

And should America and Europe become net exporters of energy they will no longer need these big international agencies, no longer need be held hostage by OPEc, no longer need answer to the international community. Those who want world government understand that. We must be made to continue in our dependency.

So Shale must be stopped.

In other shale news researchers at Cornell undercut their own collegues at the same university by publishing a rebuttal to Robert Howarth which claimed that fracking causes the emissions of dangerous greenhouse gases - including methane. New research by Lawrence M. Cathles, Larry Brown, Milton Taam and Andrew Hunter made the following conclusion:

http://www.naturalgaseurope.com/cornell-howarth-findings-wron

"We argue here that their (Howarth et al.) analysis is seriously flawed in that they significantly overestimate the fugitive emissions associated with unconventional gas extraction, undervalue the contribution of “green technologies” to reducing those emissions to a level approaching that of conventional gas, base their comparison between gas and coal on heat rather than electricity generation (almost the sole use of coal), and assume a time interval over which to compute the relative climate impact of gas compared to coal that does not capture the contrast between the long residence time of CO2 and the short residence time of methane in the atmosphere. High leakage rates, a short methane GWP, and comparison in terms of heat content are the inappropriate bases upon which Howarth et al. ground their claim that gas could be twice as bad as coal in its greenhouse impact. Using more reasonable leakage rates and bases of comparison, shale gas has a GHG footprint that is half and perhaps a third that of coal."

End abstract.

This will be a nasty fight; the luddite forces are determined to strangle this. How can the world be placed under international authority if we can't keep an environmental and energy crisis going?

Hat tip; CCNET

Speed Debating

2012-01-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

I'll admit it; I generally don't watch the primary debates.

To my way of thinking, these things really don't give any useful information, and are primarily useful for judging how the candidates LOOK and how fast they can spin an elegant soundbyte. It's like speed dating, or a peep show. The contestants have certain stock answers memorized, too, and are waiting for the opening to apply them. Rarely do we get a glimpse of the true nature of the candidates.

And they are always run by liberal media types. Why, in the name of all that is holy, do Republicans allow mainstream media personalities to run their debates?

My wife taped the last debate from New Hampshire, and I just got around to watching it.

First, George Stephanopoulis was a Democrat operative and FOB (Friend of Bill) and had absolutely no business moderating this debate. He was horrible, I might add; interrupting the contestants, speaking over the candidates, asking ridiculous hypotheticals (like "would you support a state ban on contraception"), asking loaded and presumptive questions, and generally being a pain in the posterior. And the little firecracker lighter (he really is a punk) was no worse than Diane Sawyer or that other guy.

The questions, too, were fascinating, intended to sew discourse and avoid slapping at Barack Obama's weaknesses. There weren't that many addressing the economic disaster - the story of our time and the primary motivating factor in the coming elections. There were limited questions on foreign affairs, too; another Obama weakness. There WERE questions about social issues that are at best back burner. They took ONE, count them, ONE (1) question from some schlub off Yahoo. Why only one question, and why this particular question? It was about gay marriage, to get the contestants to fall over each-other in an orgy of sympathy for those who seek to redefine marriage and vandalize our most ancient and venerable institution. Gingrich is the only one who really came out strongly here, and I remember why I've always liked him (although he's as apt to come out in favor of it next week). Gingrich argued that while we should make certain things like hospital visitation more open, we should not redefine marriage to mean any sort of relationship. It mirrors my own argument; homosexuals are free to covenant any way they wish, up to and including holding a non-legally binding wedding ceremony. But they should not expect legal recognition because marriage means a certain thing and this formalizing of a relationship does not meet that definition. Neither does Polygamy, which has a much longer and more venerable pedigree. Neither does brother and sister marriages. Neither does Man and Pet, Man and farmyard animal, Man and automobile, Man and corpse, nor Man and blow-up doll. Just because a couple of organs may fit together in some fashion it does not follow that a state of marriage may be officially recognized. It's about more than sex, more even than love. Which is why the complementary question that Stephanopoulis asked about gay adoption should have been smacked hard by the contestants - but they all tiptoed around it. Gay adoption should be one of our last options, for it is an unwholeseome environment for the child. I am not saying that gay people are bad people, or that gay people won't love and care for a child, but I am saying that they are giving bad example, and we should understand that we are not doing the kid any favors. The homosexual lifestyle is a hard one, with suicide a major cause of death. The lifespan is generally short, and mental problems, alcoholism, and drug abuse are fairly common. Disease is rampant. These are verifiable facts, not opinions. Read a rundown on them here. http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/homosexuality/ho0075.html

You can blame societal disapproval all you want (and there is a point there) but the reality is that much of the hardship of gay life stems from violating Natural Law, from violating the Law of God, from rebelling against a society that says you shouldn't do that. There is a reason why homosexual behavior has always been frowned upon. The liberal would have us believe it's some irrational hillbilly prejudice, but it comes from centuries of experience. Ours isn't the first gay generation, after all. And what is being asked is that gay people not be treated like everyone else but that they be given special priviledges. Adoption by single parents isn't a good choice, either. I really wouldn't want a child adopted by someone into sado-masochism, or group marriages. Why should homosexual couples be somehow exempted?

But the purpose was to give Obama soundbytes to use against the inevitable nominee. Obama needs to move this fight into social issues, away from foreign affairs and away from economics. Social issues divide America and even divide Republicans, and Obama's best hope is to make this upcoming election about his opponent's social conservatism.

Newt Gingrich recognized what Stephi was up to and called him on it. As Richard Viguerie points out in an article at his website:

"After Gingrich and the other candidates endured something on the order of 20 minutes of questions (most of them hypotheticals bordering on the absurd -- like whether or not states have the right to outlaw contraception), Newt finally tried to call a halt to the nonsense.

Gingrich pointed out that, “…since we’ve spent this much time on these issues -- I just want to raise a point about the news media bias. You don’t hear the opposite question asked. Should the Catholic Church be forced to close its adoption services in Massachusetts because it won’t accept gay couples, which is exactly what the state has done? Should the Catholic Church be driven out of providing charitable services in the District of Columbia because it won’t give in to secular bigotry? Should the Catholic Church find itself discriminated against by the Obama administration on key delivery of services because of the bias and the bigotry of the administration?”

Even former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, whose primary constituency IS the establishment media, agreed with Gingrich.

But the notion that there was media and institutional secular bigotry against Christians, particularly Catholics, seemed to completely befuddle the anti-Christian progressives on the ABC media panel.

Poll after poll shows that what the American people really want in their next President is someone who will encourage economic growth and rein-in the outrageous federal spending, deficit and debt that is destroying this country. Yet the media panel of the ABC/Yahoo debate invested little effort in parsing the candidates’ records, views and policies on those vital issues."

End excerpt.

Which is precisely the goal of gay marriage and many of the other social issues the Progressives and their media minions are aiming at. Make gay marriage legal and the Catholic Church, and any other religious organization that believes homosexuality is morally offensive, will be forced by law to comply. Ditto gay adoption; religious groups (and that would include Moslems) involved in adoptions would have to give children to gay couples.

And Christians believe that homosexuality is a sin. Progressives want to force that down the Christian throats. From there it becomes a small matter to say that openly gay priests have to be endured, that churches must provide health benefits for gay spouses, that gay teachers must be employed by Catholic schools. It is a wedge to destroy Christianity - and people like Stephanopoulis have to know that (his father was an Orthodox Bishop, after all.)

Gingrich should not have been the only one to argue this case. I know; it's falling into the trap laid by Steph, but the bigger trap is keeping silent. THAT has been the secret to media power all along; fear of speaking the truth lest it be used against us has shut the mouths of many on our side. We're afraid to call the media out because we don't want to give them ammunition. That is why the GOP should never have agreed to let the Democrats run the debate in the first place. OF COURSE they were going to use tricks and deceptions, lies and innuendo against our people. But, like Charlie Brown, we are ever moronically confident we're going to kick that football yet!

I was also struck by Gingrich's answer to the Middle East question. After a bunch of jawing by Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, Gingrich made the point that we should have supported the uprising in Iran. FINALLY! I have been saying that for years now! The situation in the Middle East is hard only because we do not have the will to do what is needed. When George W. Bush invaded Iraq, he put a pincer move on Iran, which is the source of terrorism in the Middle East and the main problem we face. Invading Iran would have been very difficult, because it is much larger than Iraq, it has more rugged terrain, and it would have alarmed the dailights out of Russia. Oh, and there was no international support for such a move and we would have been accused of attempting to steal their oil. Instead Bush opted to go into Iraq, where the international support was ostensibly there (there had been numerous declarations from the U.N.) and Congress had already authorized Bill Clinton to use military force. Bush figured we could go in and establish a pro-American democracy, then squeeze Iran. Unfortunately we went in with too few troops and acted as if we were going to be considered liberators. We SAW Iranians pouring into Iraq to fight the Jihad and did nothing. WE should have been the ones doing the pouring. Yet despite the difficulties, Iranians almost revolted anyway. And Barack Obama turned his back at a critical time. We should have been sending guns, sending bombs, sending electronics, establishing intel operations, etc. in Iran. I call it the Contra solution; build a revolutionary movement. The Mullahs could have been toppled and all of the problems we face with international terrorism, with Palestinian militants, with the terrible danger of Iranian nukes, would have been ended.

Muammar Khadaffi gave up his nuclear program after Saddam Hussein was captured; he said he wasn't going to end in a spider hole like Saddam. (Of course, Obama then made that the case, thus guaranteeing that any future Islamic dictator will take everyone down with them.) Muslims understand strength. If you can be moved they will push. We have to be the pusher, and remain unmovable. Taking Iran down would have done wonders.

Another thing that we have failed is in defending religious liberties in the Middle East. Christians are being persecuted terribly in Iraq, in Egypt, in Libya, in many other countries where they used to be tolerated. Islamizing the Middle East is just asking for trouble. The Christian minorites (and Jewish, and B'hai, and Zoarastrian, etc.) acted to restrain the worse impulses of the Islamic majorities. We no longer believe in Christianity here in the West, and so we yawn as the Christians and other religious minorities are systematically purged. Long term this is terrible; we should be trying to convert the Moslems, not the other way around. Islam is like the Lord of the Flies of religions; without proper intervention it metastasizes into a killing monstrosity. Where it is triumphant the most oppresive conditions exist. Islam must be tempered by competition. Ideally Islam would be converted in toto by Christianity, or Judaism, or some other more good-natured faith, but that won't happen in the forseeable future. At least there should be a healthy presence of competitor religions. But we no longer see any value in any religion, and doubtless the ACLU would howl should we attempt to help Christian or Jewish (or Buddhist, or Hindu) missionaries convert the Moslems. Religion is important - especially to them. We are not serving the cause of peace by ignoring it.

Gingrich touched on that, although he did not really ram the point home. He should have; Obama is vulnerable there. So is Romney; talk of religion brings up questions about Romney's Mormonism (which I don't have a problem with, although there are people who do) and it would have hurt Romney to discuss this. The rest of the sheeple on that stage clearly had no clue as to how to deal with the Middle East. Newt also mentioned drilling for oil here, thus draining financial resources from the Islamists. Obama is clearly vulnerable. Mitt too. But then, Gingrich was on board with Cap and Trade, so perhaps he feared being called out. Which is precisely what Perry should have done. Or Ron Paul.

And completely ignored by the contestants was Russia. Russia is a large part of the Mideast problem, and always has been.. Iran is Russia's strategic partner in it's quest to dominate energy. Russia has been helping Iran to build nuclear weapons. There are things that can be done to minimize that, but again we don't want to take the necessary steps Deploy missile defense. Upgrade our nuclear arsenal. Help Europe develop it's own sources of gas and oil (which they have in the form of shale), end the stupidity of Kyoto. Drive oil and gas prices down and Russian foreign adventurism disappears like a bottle of Vodka on the Russian steppe.

Ditto China. China can be squashed like an ant if we stop borrowing money from them. Getting our fiscal house in order means the Chinese don't have the money to make trouble in the Mideast. Again, driving the prices of oil and gas down are critical; the Chinese need those resources, as well as trade with the U.S., and they will buy from US if we just allow our businesses to go get the resources we have.

But none of that was discussed. Why not?

Because, as always, we let the Progressive drive the discussion, let the media set the terms of discourse.

In the end, this debate will go down in history as " "? It will be forgotten, because there was nobody on that stage willing to call a spade a spade. Gingrich came closest, but Gingrich, as I mentioned prior, will likely have a whole new set of opinions next week. Romney did little to alleviate my fears. Neither did anyone else.

Even if we defeat Il Duce in Novemner we aren't going to have much to write home about. These are depressing times.

Ditto the Chinese.

Beware the Ice of March

2012-01-10T06:06:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Here are a few good articles.

First, sea ice extent is almost back to 2005 levels.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php

Second, Patrick Michaels shows why Antarctica is NOT warming as the Gang Green (and Steig et. Al) claim.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2012/01/03/antarctic-temperature-trends/

From the article:

"Despite Real Climate’s predictable take on the situation, many long-time students of Antarctic climate change (including usn’s here at WCR) yawned. It has been known for decades that there is a net warming in Antarctic surface temperature that began during the International Geophysical Year in 1957. However, what is also well known, is that the vast majority of the observed warming in Antarctica took place from the late 1950s through the early 1970s and that since then—during a period going on 40 years now—there has been very little net temperature change over Antarctica taken as a whole.

What the Steig et al. analysis did do, was to alter the generally accepted spatial pattern of the temperature change across Antarctica. Whereas previous studies showed that the warming was largely limited to the Antarctic peninsula region of West Antarctica with vast areas of cooling occurring distributed across the other parts of the continent, the Steig et al. analysis effectively spread the warming across the entire continent, both during the complete period of record since 1957, as well as during the most recent two-to-three decades (Figure 2).

Almost immediately, speculation popped up across the blogosphere that something was seriously amiss with Steig’s methodology. Analysts zeroed in on the problems and went on to publish in the scientific literature their own version of the spatial patterns of temperature change across Antarctica using the same data as Steig et al. used (a combination of surface observations and satellite-borne measurements) but employing a new and improved technology.

Surprise, surprise. The “new” map of temperature change across Antarctica produced by O’Donnell et al. wasn’t all that much different from the pre-Steig vision of the temperature changes which had taken place. Once again, the warming was primarily constrained to the Antarctica Peninsula, and cooling could be found across large regions of the rest of Antarctica (Figure 3)."

Read the whole thing!

Taking the Eath's Temperature the Child's Way

2012-01-10T05:33:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

While we are on the subject of mercury http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/mercury_theatre Joanne Nova, in an older piece from 2010, makes an interesting connection between thermometers and the rising temperatures. http://joannenova.com.au/2010/05/the-great-dying-of-thermometers/

Please note that there is correlation between the supposed 20th century temperature spike and the number of thermometers available to check temperatures worldwide; temperatures rose as the number of thermometers increased. Also, please note the enormous decline of thermometers used to measure temperatures in recent years. Is this to "hide the decline"? Using fewer actual measurements means we are projecting temperature trends more and more. How can we claim to know planetary temperatures if we are making best guesses? Also notice that Europe - which is in the tank for Global Warming heart and soul, and thinks this is a dandy tool to bring the U.S. down a peg or two, has the lion's share of thermometers actually measuring temps.

While this is an older piece, I thought it worth posting because she uses graphics to make the case quite convincingly - and because it bears repeating.

It's interesting; we noticed it was warming as we measured temperatures in more and more places, then as we phased out temperature stations (and Jo calles it the Great Dying of Thermometers) we see a big spike. The last twenty years are touted as the warmist on record, yet we have but a fraction of the land-based stations we had twenty years ago. It's shocking that public policy - especially on the massive scale that we are told is necessary - is being made on such paltry data.

I wonder if we have had any warming at all; yes, it has warmed from the end of the Dalton Minimum, but perhaps we simply didn't know what was happening in the rest of the world? China, Russia, the Congo, Bolivia, these types of places only came online in the last fifty years as decent record keepers. As has been pointed out about Russia, the Soviet system encouraged fudging temperature data; "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" meant that greater need led to more heating fuel, more clothes, etc. so the local governments would try to make it appear they were in greater need. Is the "Russian hot spot" surprising, given that the data no longer needs to be fudged? Ditto China. And I don't think tracking temperature was a high priority to bushmen in the Congo, or Fore' in New Guinnea. Were we really getting a good idea of what was happening in the Andes, or on Kerguelen Island?

Global Warming in it's modern catastrophic form started as speculation by environmental groups, and given the people at the Endangered Atmospheres Conference (which was chaired by Margaret Mead and features such leftist alarmists as John Holdren, James Lovelock, Paul Ehrlich, William Kellogg, Global Cooling alarmist Stephan Schneider, George Woodwell, and a host of other radicals. The agreement was to promote Global Cooling to bring the unwashed masses on board the environmentalist train, but the failure of that theory led them to slide over to their backup, global warming.

http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/genesis_of_the_global_warming_hoax

Given that AGW was born of activist "concerned scientists" one has to doubt the entire theory. And given the theory fails in almost every way, from it's predictions to it's own tests, one has to doubt every aspect of the science of AGW. Bear in mind, many good scientists work in climatology, but of course they can only assume the data the gatekeepers are giving them is valid. Fudge that data and many who wouldn't be on board now see AGW as true. They can only work with what they are given.

And we furthermore know from the Climategate e-mails that one of the biggest collector/collator of data - the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia - was actively working to fudge the data going to the scientists.

So, is the Earth warming? I have absolutely no idea, and frankly neither do any real scientists.
One thing I do know is that what is being demanded by the environmentalists, by statists, by foundations and think tanks and politicians, cannot be justified in any credible way. We are being told that we have to fundamentally restructure our whole civilization to prevent a catastrophe' that is based on science that is very shaky at best.

Mercury Theatre

2012-01-10T05:00:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

This from SEPP:

By Ken Haapala, Executive Vice President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)

EPA Skinning the Cat: After cap-and-trade failed to pass the Senate controlled by his own party, President Obama famously stated there is more than one way to skin the cat. The cat, of course, is the American public and its use of energy. The preferred skinner is the EPA, which has launched a series of intensified regulations to drive up the cost of energy use to the public, emphasizing the consumption of electricity from coal fired utility plants. As described in prior TWTWs (e.g. July 9, Aug 6) , the EPA rule for cross-state emissions was one such example of skinning the cat that depended on double and triple counting of its benefits. The benefits largely came from reductions of emissions from soot, which are controlled by a totally separate set of regulations. The other set of supposed benefits are a reduction of "acidic gases", namely sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides. The claim is that reducing these gases will reduce new cases of childhood asthma, yet the statistical relationship between these gases and asthma is the opposite of what EPA claims. These cross-state regulations are now tied up in court.

The latest EPA effort to skin the cat are the new Mercury and Air Toxics rules (Utility MACT) announced just before Christmas. These include the double and triple accounting as the prior rules but also include the supposed benefits of reduction in mercury. And herein is the tale of two islands.

As published in the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere, Willie Soon analyzed the proposed mercury rules. Below is a brief summary of one point in the Soon study. Mercury is a naturally occurring metal, found in the earth, seas, and the atmosphere. For many years mercury was used in thermometers, oral, indoor, and outside. It is used in fluorescent light bulbs. Certain compounds of mercury are toxic to humans, but humans evolved certain defenses against it.

A study of the mercury level in the blood of residents of the Faroe Islands, in the Norwegian Sea between Scotland and Iceland, indicated that the children may suffer from impaired cognitive functions from their mothers eating large amounts of seafood and having a certain level of mercury in their blood as a result.

A study of the mercury level of the residents of the Seychelles Islands off the east coast of Africa, the Seychelles Children Development Study, found no such impaired cognitive functions even though the residents eat large amounts of sea food. Similarly, no impaired cognitive functions have been found in populations of other nations consuming large amounts of sea food except where toxins have been dumped into the local waters.

A scientific organization would have explored the difference between the eating habits of the residents of the Faroe Islands and the Seychelles Islands, and, perhaps, discovered that the residents of the Faroe Islands eat fish and whale meat and blubber where the residents of the Seychelles Islands eat fish but no whale meat and blubber. It turns out that whale meat and blubber are heavy in other toxins and have little selenium which binds to mercury and renders it largely non-toxic to humans.

The EPA did not perform a rigorous independent study of the science used in making its new rules. The EPA chose the Faroe Islands study to substantiate its pronouncements on acceptable mercury levels and ignored the Seychelles Islands study. Of course, Americans eat virtually no whale meat and blubber. Please see links under "EPA and other Regulators on the March." The complete Soon report can be found at:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stor...

End

Interesting, articles are appearing blaming mercury for the Great Dying (which killed off a majority of all life on Earth 250 million years ago) at a time when the Obama EPA is trying to issue draconian controls ostensibly to reduce mercury in the environment. http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/permian_mercury_poisoning

If mercury is so bad, why are they insisting we bring it home with us, and plug it into our light sockets? You cannot even buy a mercury thermostat anymore; you have to purchase a digital one that requires a battery. I know; I just had a new furnace installed last year and tried to get them to put in an old-fashioned thermostat. It was banned because of the tiny amount of mercury in it - while we are supposed to put a dozen light bulbs filled with mercury in our sockets, bulbs which have to be changed and often break. Great idea!

Freedom Requires a Moral People

2012-01-10T04:05:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Richard Viguerie calls it like it is.
http://www.conservativehq.com/article/6144-arrogance-republican-elite-hides-their-real-fear

From the article:

"Washington’s inside Republican elite are so anxious to get back to dividing-up the spoils on Capitol Hill, and so contemptuous of the will of the people, that they have now declared the race for the Republican nomination for President over -- and Mitt Romney nominated -- even before the first delegate has even been allocated.

POLITICO may have had some of the best proof of this phenomenon in quoting a veteran House Republican, -- who is ostensibly neutral in the presidential race -- who said: “I sort of think it’s over, right?”

This unnamed Capitol Hill Republican went on to observe about the candidate who lost 75 percent of the vote in Iowa: “South Carolina and Florida are the nails in the coffin, which is why the right is so mad -- they see it coming but the dominoes are falling just right for Mitt as they did for [John] McCain… The party establishment does not want this intra-warfare much longer so we can focus on just Obama rather than the oddballs on the stage that can’t even remember the DOE or EPA.”

The “oddball” to whom the anonymous Congressman is referring to is of course, Texas Governor Rick Perry, the Governor of the second largest state in the Union."

End excerpt.

And that is entirely right; the GOP is the junior partner in crime in Washington, but partners nonetheless. They don't really want anything to change. They enjoy swaggering into parties, enjoy their power and authority, eat it all up. Many people were shocked that, despite considerable bluster, John Boehner seems to have walked into one trap after another. He didn't stumble in; he walked into those traps willingly, because they provided him with a way out of his dilemma. Boehner doesn't want to do what the Tea Party wants him to do, and really just wants things back to "normal". He willingly walked into those traps, because it's better to be thought careless or foolish then to be known as an enemy to the base. He is not alone in this.

This generation (of politicians) must pass away before America can enter the promised land of fiscal responsibility, methinks. They are corrupt to the core.

Unfortunately, much of the American electorate is likewise. Too many Americans do not want to fix the problem but to keep the gravy train rolling.

We do not have a spending problem in America, or at least our problem isn't the spending, exactly. Nor do we have a revenue problem. What we have is a moral and spirutual problem, an overdraft of our moral bank account. We have become a nation of people who want to live off the backs of our fellows, who want to push the problems we are creating off on our children, and their children, and their children's children. We have become a nation that refuses to delay any gratification, that demands an easy and fun-filled life, that doesn't want to save for tomorrow. America no longer looks to the future, no longer thinks about how to make the next generation secure. Materialism, neo-atheism, humanism, have all led the American People to adopt an "eat, drink, and be merry" approach, because too few believe that the rewards will come in the hereafter for what we do in life, and the best that too many Americans can believe in is to grab what pleasures and profits we can in this world. Isn't that the core of Occupy Wall Street? "We want what we want, and demand you give it to us". Isn't that what the teacher's unions were demanding in Wisconsin? They want to live better than everyone else, and by jumpin' Jehosephat the taxpayers will pay - even if it ruins the state. Everyone wants their SSI, AFDC, WIC, food stamps. We pass a trillion dollar stimulus to give money away like candy. We pass a health care reform which gives medical care to everyone -including those who do not need it - despite the fact that it will bankrupt the country. We demand not just school lunches but dinners and breakfasts as well - on the taxpayer dime.

A moral people would not accept this. But they demand it. And politicians give it, because it gets them elected.

Boxer James J. Braddock had to go on the dole during the Depression, but it ate away at him. As soon as he had the money he gave it back to the authorities, because he didn't think he deserved to take from his fellow citizens. He wasn't all that unusual back then. Now we would call him a saint! Most Americans would think a guy like Braddock is a total fool.

And government has usurped the role of private individuals. Consider charity; it used to be handled by Churches and local organizations. But "separation of Church and State" has led governments to squeeze the church charities out of the game, and a plethora of leftist political correctness has done likewise to many local organizations. Now the taxpayer has to foot the bill for what philanthropes used to give freely.

This thing feeds itself, too; teaching, for instance, has become infested with the professional parasitic class, and these parasites are busily recruiting the next generation, teaching liberal doctrine and sloth as if it were a virtue. Much has been written about the "success" of welfare in destroying the black family, and it's bitter harvest is not limited to black people. A family raised on welfare, with grandma, mother, and children all subsisting on the dole, sees no other option. Where a woman may have one or two children she now has ten, because someone else is paying and she gets extra for every extra mouth. Ten children, each a product of the welfare state, each having ten children of their own, whose existence is entirely predicated on government largess. How do you compete with that?

That is why I believe the political solutions will ultimately fail. We cannot solve our problems with new blood in Congress. Oh, they can help, but the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves. America must have a religious and spiritual awakening. Without it we will continue the long, excruciating slide into perdition.

Freedom requires a moral people. We have not been that for some time.

Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grade Atheist?

2012-01-09T18:31:00.000-08:00

Jack Kemp

Victoria Knox, who writes the Tea Party Nation "The Daily Blade" column has contacted me after reading my "The Rise of Spiritual Illiteracy" article and supplied these remarks from one of her columns:

THE DAILY BLADE: Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grade Atheist? (Obama Isn’t.)

A telephone survey of more than 3,400 Americans by Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life measuring Americans' knowledge about the Bible, religion, famous religious figures and the First Amendment finds that atheists and agnostics answered more of the 32 questions correctly than believers, which “may give new meaning to the term "blind faith," sniggers the Los Angeles Times:

Atheists and agnostics - those who believe there is no G-d or who aren't sure - were more likely to answer the survey's questions correctly. Jews and Mormons ranked just below them in the survey's measurement of religious knowledge - so close as to be statistically tied.

So why would an atheist know more about religion than a Christian?

American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.

"These are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."

Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated, and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said that atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education.

The New York Times notes that “[c]lergy members who are concerned that their congregants know little about the essentials of their own faith will no doubt be appalled by some of these findings”:

† Fifty-three percent of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the man who started the Protestant Reformation.

† Forty-five percent of Catholics did not know that their church teaches that the consecrated bread and wine in holy communion are not merely symbols, but actually become the body and blood of Christ.

† Forty-three percent of Jews did not know that Maimonides, one of the foremost rabbinical authorities and philosophers, was Jewish.

The question about Maimonides was the one that the fewest people answered correctly. But 51 percent knew that Joseph Smith was Mormon, and 82 percent knew that Mother Theresa was Roman Catholic.

Like many Americans, President Barack Hussein Obama’s understanding of the precepts of his faith is shaky – and not necessarily because his mother "didn't raise me in the church" or because he “came to my Christian faith later in life." At a campaign event in New Mexico, he told a woman who asked why he's a Christian that “Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead - being my brothers' and sisters' keeper, treating others as they would treat me."

Oy. Where to begin ...

Jesus never spoke of himself or anyone else being his brother’s keeper. But Cain did – in answer to G-d demanding to know where Abel was (Genesis 4:8-10). Obama also misunderstands the connotation of “keeper” in the Old Testament. For instance, Abel is described as “a keeper of sheep” (Genesis 4:2) – that is, he stood watch over them. So Cain – who tried to evade the question by being insolent – was really saying: “How should I know where my brother is? Am I supposed to watch him every minute of the day?”

Perhaps Obama was referring to Galatians 6:2 (Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ). But there are many ways to bear another’s burdens; the help you offer need not be financial, but can be emotional, spiritual and even physical labor. But having learned his faith from Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama interprets “keeper” and “bearing another’s burdens” as taking from the rich and giving to the poor. When a rich Christian voluntarily gives to the poor, he has the satisfaction of knowing that he fulfilled the law of Christ, but neither Wright nor Obama would allow him that grace.

As for “treating others as they would treat me” – that’s the Chicago version of the Golden Rule (“Somebody messes with me, I'm gonna mess with him.”). In answer to the question, "which is the greatest commandment," Jesus said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Which means treat your neighbor no worse than you would treat yourself – not treat your neighbor no better than he treats you.

Joe (Biden) vs. the Volcanoe

2012-01-09T18:30:00.001-08:00

Mike W. sends this our way:

http://mysteriousnz.co.nz/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1631

From the article:

"Okay, here's the bombshell. The volcanic eruption at Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano, since its first spewed volcanic ash, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet - all of you. And now with Iceland's Grimsvotn volcano erupting on May 21, 2011, it has been a losing battle.

Of course you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress - it's that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans and all animal life.

I know, it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of: driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kid's "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cents light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs ... well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days."

End excerpt.

Unfortunately the author goes on to say that volcanic ASH reduced the carbon-saving efforts, which is a mistake because ash thrown into the atmosphere acts to increase planetary albedo, cooling the Earth - unless it's black carbon and ends up sitting on top of glaciers and ice flows, absorbing heat. Volcanoes generally cause cooling; 1816 is often called The Year without a Summer because of the eruption of Mt. Tambora (in 1815). It was described as a persistant "dry fog" with snow falling in June in places like Albany New York. River and lake ice were visible in July and August as far south as Pennsylvania. By 1817 New York City saw a winter temperature of -26* F.

Of course the Dalton Minimum was in full swing at this time as well.

Ron De Haan warns about this:

"David Archibald, a scientist from Australia discovered a relationship between the length of a solar cycle and global temperature.

Every year a solar cycle goes beyond the average 11.5 years cycle, global temperatures will drop by 0.7 degrees.

Recent findings and analysis have found that solar cycle 24 might last eighteen years. An eighteen year long Solar Cycle 24 would be very significant in that it would be five and a half years longer than Solar Cycle 23. With the solar cycle length/temperature relationship for the US-Canadian border being 0.7 degree Celsius for each year of solar cycle length, a further cooling of 3.8 degree Celsius is in the train for the next decade.

If we would experience a Pinatubu like volcanic eruption at this time this will trigger a global crop loss like we experienced in 1816 in the aftermath of the Tamborra eruption.

Mass starvation due to wide spread famine, riots and even war will occur. With a Pinatubu size eruption statistically happening every 46 years the odds that this could happen are 50-50. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/08/solar-cycle-24-length-and-its-consequences/#more-54426 "

End excerpt.

How much would anyone care to wager that should such a thing happen the Gang Green, those Enviro-Nazis, would blame such an event on Global Warming and perhaps fracking for oil and gas? How much could this "good crisis" not be allowed to go to waste? Many people would follow along if a crop failure should occur.

Obama's Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps at American Thinker.

2012-01-09T05:58:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Obama's Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps at American Thinker.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/obamas_fascist_america_in_10_easy_steps.html

Saul Alinsky said to hold your enemy to his or her own standard, so I'm holding Naomi Wolf and the other Leftists who called Bush a fascist to account.

The Rise of Spiritual Illiteracy

2012-01-09T05:44:00.001-08:00

Jack Kemp

Victoria Knox, Tea Party Nation columnist, had previously posted a comment in reply to my article "Can this help legally support Christmas & Hannukah displays?" which lead to a discussion between us involving a book I recently finished.

The subject was speculation on how to advocate for Christmas and Hannukah displays and Ms. Knox stated that she believed a public building's Christmas display of a creche should be legally allowed in America.I replied that she would have to activate the religious faith of millions of Christians to get enough political pressure to have her desire come true, namely in the form of new elected officials to support her position,. But there is also an underlying cultural and educational assumption here of religious literacy among American voters. This assumption is not wholly warranted today, as author and prison church ministry leader Charles Colson knows.

In an increasingly secular society, not every nominal Christian may know who is actually depicted in a creche in a Nativity scene. Is this an outrageous statement on my part? Fifty years ago, it would have been.

In Charles Colson's "The Sky is Not Falling," there is a section called "The Rise of Spiritual Illiteracy" in Chapter 14 which states:

BEGIN QUOTE

January 2001: America's newly elected president delivers his inaugural address. Commenting on it, Dick Meyer of CBS News confesses, "There were a few phrases in the speech I just didn't get. One was, 'When we see the wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, we will not pass on the other side." Meyers concludes, "I hope there's not a quiz."

SECTION OMITTED

...Consider pollster George Barna says only a small percentage of Americans can name the Ten Commandments,
and only 42 percent can identify who preached the Sermon on the Mount. As Oxford theologian Alister McGrath explains, "In an increasingly secular culture, fewer and fewer people outside the Christian community have any real understanding of what Christians believe."

END QUOTE

This spiritual illiteracy is mirrored among American Jews as well. As I wrote at American Thinker in December of 2004 in "Spirit and sensitivity:"
http://www.americanthinker.com/2004/12/spirit_and_sensivity.html

QUOTE

Last year, my father died and, in chance conversations with two liberal Jews, I used a common Yiddish & Hebrew phrase, Uleh leh shulem ("He rose to Heaven to his Peace"). They didn't know what I was talking about. One had
the decency to admit it and asked me what the phrase meant. The other was just embarrassed by her ignorance when I had to explain it in order to continue our conversation. When I was growing up in the Bronx 50 years ago, this common Yiddish phrase was familiar to every Jew, from an illiterate immigrant to a typical homemaker to a college graduate New York City public school teacher.

It is my contention that these same assimilated liberal Jews who didn't recognize the phrase are the very ones who feel most threatened by a Nativity scene on a courthouse lawn, or the singing of Christmas carols, because they are the most alienated from their own religion and culture. The bigger the assimilation, the more they fear losing their identity by merely singing - or even hearing - "Jingle Bells."

END QUOTE

I could add to this now, that I've met at least one Jew in a synagogue who didn't know the Hebrew name for the Book of Genesis (It's "Behresheet" in Sephardic or Israeli Hebrew and "Beraishis" in Askenazi/European Hebrew).

But Charles Colson (and myself) are not throwing up our hands in resignation. Colson's above mentioned "The Sky is Not Falling" goes on to talk about public schools across the nation having Released Time Bible Education and mentions the Bible Literacy Project http://www.bibleliteracy.org/site/Curriculum/index.htm which teaches the Bible as literature and part of our cultural heritage in schools. This has support "ranging from the American Jewish Committee to the National Association of Evangelicals to the American Federation of Teachers" who all reviewed this program.

I could add that a few years ago in New York, the recently deceased atheist intellectual and writer Christopher Hitchens, author of "God is not Great" (a screed against faith) was being interviewed at a dinner by the Freedom Center and Front Page website founder David Horowitz. I - and about 200 others - were in attendance as Christopher Hitchens casually admitted that he sent his young daughter to a Quaker School so that she would learn about the Bible and would not be illiterate of the basic literature of Western Civilization.

So there you have it. If Victoria Knox - or anyone else - is looking for support for legalizing creches in an American environment where many people can't tell you who spoke the Sermon on the Mount (hint: His initials are "J.C."), they should seriously consider involvement in projects of spreading knowledge of the Scriptures to young people - and adults - as a first step. One can't call for someone's spiritual knowledge to rise up like Lazarus from the grave if that someone doesn't know who Lazarus was.

Michelle Antoinette

2012-01-09T04:36:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

We're all aware of the Obama - particularly Mrs. Obama's - "let them eat cake" attachment to the high life, but this goes beyond the pale. Madam Obami threw a hideously expensive secret Holloween gala.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/08/book-white-house-hosted-hollywood-halloween-bash-before-burton-film-release/?icid=maing-grid10%7Chtmlws-main-nb%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D125812

According to Fox News:

"White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Sunday the event, which was decorated by Tim Burton and featured Johnny Depp in his Mad Hatter role from Burton's acclaimed "Alice in Wonderland," was held for local children from the Washington D.C.-area and for hundreds of military families."

[...]

"In her new book, "The Obamas," author Jodi Kantor wrote that the White House was more than just a little concerned about the way the costume party would affect the public's perceptions.

"White House officials were so nervous about how a splashy, Hollywoodesque party would look to jobless Americans -- or their representatives in Congress, who would soon vote on health care -- that the event was not discussed publicly, and Burton and Depp's contributions went unacknowledged."

The event, so over the top that "Star Wars" creator George Lucas loaned out the original Chewbacca costume from the legendary film for an unknown participant to wear, was covered by a front event for the press in which the first couple handed out candy to trick or treaters. The president did not don a costume to that event, but first lady Michelle Obama wore a leopard-print sweater, cat ears and sparkly eye makeup.

Inside, at the invitation-only affair for children of military personnel and White House administrators, the State Dining Room served as Wonderland while Depp greeted guests from a table-top and Burton decorated the White House "in his signature creepy-comic style."

According to the book, fruit punch was served in blood vials and a magic show was held for the kids in the East Room"

End excerpts.

The hallmark of dictators and dictator wannabees is a willingness to live very well while their subjects do without. Mr. Obama has frequently asked the American public to go without. He said the time of setting the thermostat at 72* is over - despite the fact that he sets his at 80* on cold winter days. He talks about shared sacrifice while his wife rents five star hotels - 600 rooms - in Spain to have a wild Spanish vacation for all her friends, family, acquaintences, and hangers-on. The Obamas take endless vacations, and Barack plays endless rounds of golf, all on the public dime, at a time when the U.S. is facing finanacial disaster.

Michelle truly is the Marie Antoinette of our time.

Permian Mercury Poisoning

2012-01-08T15:07:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

An article in Physorg.com, the largely junk science site, is arguing that the Great Dying at the end of the Permian was caused in part by an increase in Mercury.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-earth-massive-extinction-story-worse.html

Funny; I don't remember Compact Florescent light bulbs being around that long.

U.S. Funding Half of IPCC Expenses

2012-01-08T15:04:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Looks like the U.S. taxpayer is footing the bill for nearly half of the IPCC expenses.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-earth-massive-extinction-story-worse.html

According to CNS News:

"CNSNews.com) – A study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined that the United States funded the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations’ authority on alleged man-made global warming, with $31.1 million since 2001, nearly half of the panel’s annual budget.

The GAO also found that this funding information “was not available in budget documents or on the websites of the relevant federal agencies, and the agencies are generally not required to report this information to Congress.”

In a Nov. 17, 2011 report, “International Climate Change Assessments: Federal Agencies Should Improve Reporting and Oversight of U.S. Funding,” the GAO found that the State Department provided $19 million for administrative and other expenses, while the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) provided $12.1 million in technical support through the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), averaging an annual $3.1 million to the IPCC over 10 years -- $31.1 million so far."

End excerpt.

So, America is paying to get screwed by the U.N., paying for junk science as a tool to make America poorer and place her under the thumb of the internationalistic misanthrope.

Any wonder why we are broke?

Hat tip: Climate Depot www.climatedepot.com

Barack Machiavelli

2012-01-08T06:00:00.000-08:00

By Alan Caruba

The Founding Fathers, authors of the Constitution, were obsessed with any form of government that could become too powerful, too willing to use force to oppress citizens. They had cause. They had fought a long war against the greatest power of their age, ruled by a king with nearly absolute power. They fashioned an instrument designed to ensure that the President could not rule by edict and defused power among three branches of government.

We have a President currently running for reelection against Congress, Wall Street, Republicans, and the right of citizens to be free of an overly intrusive government.

Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution says: All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in the Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

All appointments of the President must be approved by the Senate while it is in session and the Senate, even over the Christmas and New Year’s vacation has remained in session, if only in a pro forma, technical manner. Every three days it has been convened to assert its powers.

Even so, President Obama has announced several “recess” appointments, all clearly a challenge to the Senate and all clearly a tyrannical power grab. He appointed Richard Cordray as the first director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new function that puts government between the lender and the citizen. In theory, all loans in the future will be subject to government approval. This is Communism, not Capitalism.

In addition, he appointed three members to the National Labor Relations Board, intended to arbitrate disputes between unions and corporations. None of them have appeared before a Senate committee for vetting. It was this board that demanded Boeing shut down its new factory in South Carolina, one of many “right to work” states that empower workers with the right to determine whether they want to join a union or not.

Neither Obama, nor any president who preceded him can make appointments without the “advice and consent” of the Senate. (Article II, Section 2). As recently as the first week of the year, referring to the Senate, Obama asserted that “I have an obligation as President to do what I can without them.” He has no such obligation. Those are the words of an incipient tyrant.

These actions put me in mind of Niccolo Machiavelli, famed as the author of “The Prince”, a book of advice to Lorenzo de Medici who was the ruler of the former republic of Florence, one of many city states in Italy. Born in 1469 and died in 1527, Machiavelli living during the early years of the Renaissance, a period that saw the flowering of literature, science, art, religion and politics. Historians consider it a bridge between the Middle Ages and the modern era.

The renaissance was a period of social and political upheaval, one in which the various princes ruled so long as they could protect their principalities against wars by others seeking to expand their powers. “The Prince” is largely seen as advice on how a prince may have to resort to the methodical use of brute force and deceit to hold onto power, but it was more than that. It was a guide to ruling people with a minimum of oppression.

“It should be borne in mind,” Machiavelli wrote, “that there is nothing more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes in a state’s constitution.” Obama is engaged in an attack on the U.S. Constitution.

Of princely power, Machiavelli wrote, “The people are everywhere anxious not be dominated or oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles are out to dominate and oppress the people. These opposed ambitions bring about one of three results; a principality, a free city, or anarchy.” The Constitution ensures a free nation with limited federal powers and is a guard against anarchy.

Evidence of Obama’s narcissism and drive for complete power is ample. He is on record as saying the Constitution is composed of “negative” limits on power. Others regard the Constitution as the ultimate protection against the unlawful use of power. This is particularly evident in the Bill of Rights which was appended to the Constitution because several of the first States would not ratify without it.

In his advice to Lorenzo de Medici, Machiavelli raised the question of “whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse. Within the context of the time, he said, “it is far better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.” In the run up to Christmas, Americans bought guns in record numbers which suggests there is considerable fear of Obama and the results of his policies over the past three years.

We have witnessed and been victimized by a Democrat-controlled Congress that forced Obamacare on an unwilling public. We have seen the rise of Islamic fanaticism as the result of his failed policies toward Iran and the Middle East. We have had record breaking debt imposed on us by his failed “stimulus” policies. We have seen continued efforts to reduce our military power and to thwart access to our ample energy resources of oil, natural gas, and coal.

It is a long list of usurpations of power that endanger the nation domestically and internationally. Whether it was done out of stupidity or a deliberate effort to harm the nation can be debated, but the most outstanding attribute of Obama has been his continual lying and Machiavelli notes that “the deceiver will always find someone ready to be deceived.”

In this effort, Obama has been greatly aided by the mainstream media with a few notable exceptions. The trust that once reposed in the nation’s print and broadcast media has been eroded and will be hard to regain. The trust given Obama is long gone by all but a few ignorant and lazy citizens content to have their lives ruled by an over-reaching executive branch of government.

The election process will rid us of Obama and likely many of those Democrat legislators who have supported his policies. The House is controlled by the Republicans and the Senate is likely to follow.

Meanwhile, we must guard against the present occupant of the White House. Americans waged a war against oppression in the past and will, if necessary, do so again.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Can this help legally support Christmas & Hannukah displays?

2012-01-07T11:20:00.000-08:00

Jack Kemp

I was just reading about the legal battle over Christmas and Hannukah public displays in Don Feder's 1998 book
"Who's Afraid of the Religious Right?" He brought up an interesting U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Just like the best time to buy Christmas cards is after the December 25th, the best time to plan for the protecting the right to religious displays may be right now.

I'm making the assumption that some of you will want to spend some of your free time away from following the Republican Presidential Nomination contest and concentrate some effort on stopping the ACLU from attempting to make you and your children ashamed of publicly celebrating Christmas or Hannukah. Perhaps by asking local candidates their opinion in this matter, you can draw out a Democrat (or a Republican) to give their view on this great cultural divide. And since I am not an attorney, I don't know if this Supreme Court decision I am about to mention is still considered a potent legal argument in favor of religous displays. Hopefully, some attorneys will read this and know the answer - and the answer will be positive.

Mr. Feder makes reference to a 1989 US Supreme Court case upholding a Hannukah menorah display in Pittsburgh. The case is County of Allegheny v. ACLU, 492 U.S. 573 (1989)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegheny_County_v._Greater_Pittsburgh... In it, the Supreme Court said that the Allegheny County Court House could not display a creche on its grand staircase - but ruled that a large Hannukah
menorah could be displayed alongside a Christmas tree at the City-County Building. The legality of the the Christmas tree was not considered by the court. Wikipedia further clarifies:

BEGIN QUOTE

A different majority held that the menorah display did not have the prohibited effect of endorsing religion, given its "particular physical setting". Its combined display with a Christmas tree and a sign saluting liberty did not impermissably endorse both the Christian and Jewish faiths, but simply recognized that both Christmas and Hanukkah are part of the same winter-holiday season, which, the court found, has attained a secular status in U.S. society.

END QUOTE

I would argue - although I am not a lawyer - that since they allowed the Christmas tree to stand as a "secular holiday" symbol, they created a de facto ruling that endorses Judeo-Christian culture via a backdoor method. Even without is, in effect, de facto argument in favor of the tree, the fact that the Supreme Court specifically ruled that the named Hannukah menorah could stand, leads to a future argument that if the menorah could specifically stand, for someone else to argue in another juristiction to not allow an accompanying Christmas tree to stand would be religous discrimination against Christianity and the beliefs of the Founding Fathers and American culture.

Now there are obviously many aspects of this 1989 court decision that go way beyond what I know about the law.
I'm obviously advancing an pro-religious display argument, but that of a layman. An attorney reading this piece would think my argument is simplistic, be they in agreement or disagreement with my opinion. I plead guilty. However, I think there is something here to build a pro-religious display court case that an attorney and/or a local government administrator could use. Not ever town in America knows of this Supreme Court decision and what I write could be an inspiration to someone else to develop an better argument that could stop the ACLU from making our public buildings look like "The Ghost of Stalin Past" each December.

If citing this 1989 case still is of any value, please spread the word.

When Hot isn't so Hot

2012-01-07T10:56:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Here is an interesting table.
http://reasonabledoubtclimate.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/screen-shot-2012-01-06-at-9-54-42-pm.png

Seems that, outside of a spike in 2006 - 2007, U.S. temperatures have been cooling - at least since the high in 1998.

Please note that the two "hottest years on record" for planetary temperatures were below middle of the pack, with 2011 being cooler than 15 other years since 1980 and the "hot" year of 2010 being below 2011 with an average temperature of 53.81* F., .02 degrees colder than last year. 2005, a5 54.36*, is said to be the hottest year on record by NOAA and the other alarmists, while it is in sixth place in the U.S.

Please note that NOAA lists 2011 as "above normal" in the U.S., even while a table of it's data clearly shows it right in the middle. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/national/Nationaltrank/201101-201112.gif

Strange how the U.S. isn't warming, but the rest of the world is. The United States is considered the gold standard of surface temperature data, even while it has been documented to have terrible bias resulting from the urban heat island effect and estimated data. (See Surfacestations.org.)

In short, I suspect the claims of "warmest on record" http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110112_globalstats.html for last year are bogus.

Hat tip: Tom Nelson www.tomnelson.blogspot.com

Stephen Hawking's Nuclear Fears

2012-01-07T09:24:00.000-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking is now calling for the colonization of space because he believes Mankind is doomed to nuclear armageddon here on Earth.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/stephen-hawking/8996654/Prof-Stephen-Hawking-man-faces-nuclear-armageddon-and-must-colonise-space.html

Hawking has spent his career thinking about black holes and other astronomical phonomena, has grown increasingly, well, odd in recent years; he worries about Global Warming, about manmade viruses, and has returned to the old "Union of Concerned Scientists" saw of nuclear war.

Not that this isn't a good idea; I have always advocated settling the solar system, the sooner the better. There are things that can happen to the Earth that we have no control over, such as asteroidal strikes, another Carrington Event (the Carrington Event was a huge coronal Mass Ejection event that hit the Earth in 1859 and would today blow out all of our electronics worldwide and return our planet to pre-electronic technology - with modern population pressures), a close approach to a small black hole, or any other such astronomical events that could hurt us. And I have practical considerations; we need the resources space offers. Also, I think Mankind needs the sense of purpose and hope that only a frontier can provide. We are cooped up on this claustrophobic planet, surrounded by our own thoughts and our own little worlds of houses and people and made things. Frontiers are places that perhaps few visit, but just the knowledge that they are there and that a man fed-up can pull up stakes and head to an unsettled wilderness offers a psychological safety valve. Lunar colonies, Martian colonies, colonies on Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Triton, even the asteroids, offer that sense of mystery and that sense of freedom. Without Man's movement into the solar system - and eventually into the galaxy - we will fester in the puss of our own shattered dreams and imprisonment.

But, Hawking is being driven by too many phantom fears. Doubtless his own imprisonment in a wheelchair contributes to a sense of foreboding, especially considering he has been there for decades and now faces death. I would argue that Hawking's problem stems from his move from agnosticism to full-blown atheism; he has convinced himself that the Universe is all, there is no God, and when he is gone all will be lost. So now he jumps at shadows, frightened of a sudden ending for both himself and Mankind.

As has been attributed to Chesterton; "When a man stops believing in God he will believe in anything"; Hawking is now ready to believe in anything, it seems to me.

I suspect his atheism stems from an anger at his situation. He has suffered from ALS, aka Lou Gerig's Disease, and has been trapped in that wheel chair for close to half a century. That would make anyone bitter. There are only two ways to go when one is in such a situation; either one embraces God, hoping for a life to come better than the terrible one here, or one grows angry at God and rejects Him. Few will reject God directly, acknowledging His existence but telling Him to go hang; it's illogical to bait an all-powerful Creator. But one can hedge one's bets, denying His existence. It makes it possible to still keep some hope while spitting in the Divine eye. Many famous atheists have comforted themselves with the notion that they will be able to talk their way out of Hell by claiming an honest mistake, should they find themselves judged before the Most High.

Any way you slice it, Hawking is becoming increasingly buggy of late, yet his prestige is such that any pronouncement from his is treated as if it were coming from the Oracle of Delphi. Hawking isn't omniscient, nor is he to be listened to outside of his field. He is a very smart guy who knows a very lot about the cosmos, but that is as far as it goes.

Liberals worship experts. It's their substitute for Holy Scripture; an expert in one field knows all, and should be obeyed as one would obey the Ten Commandments. When Hawking comes out in favor of national healthcare he is idolized. He knows little about the subject except that he has benefitted from it (would he have been so well treated had he been an unknown guy, say, a farmer rather than a famous scientist?) Yet his expertise in one field automatically grants him expertise in all fields. If he says there is no God he is given credence. When he says "We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star." in Der Spiegel (1988) he is glorified. He will be put on a pedastal - as long as he justifies the Liberal position. Should he have a "come to Jesus" moment and say that he is now convinced that there is a God based on his study of the Universe his expert status will be revoked and he will be called sick, in dementia, and eventually ignored.

But he has given them some good copy. Consider;

"As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth. As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change... There’s a realization that we are changing our climate for the worse. That would have catastrophic effects. Although the threat is not as dire as that of nuclear weapons right now, in the long term we are looking at a serious threat."

or

"In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?"

or

"The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can't believe the whole universe exists for our benefit. That would be like saying that you would disappear if I closed my eyes".

And

"The life we have on Earth must have spontaneously generated itself. It must therefore be possible for life to exist spontaneously elsewhere in the universe."

Or approving of euthanasia and suicide "The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants."

And Hawking's tendency to avoid politics make him a favorite, because what he says then is coming from "pure science" as the Left can portray it, rather than from a person's opinion.

At any rate, outside of physics Stephen Hawking holds opinions no better informed than anyone else. Just because somebody is celebrated by the media for accomplishments in one field hardly qualifies them to speak on any subject.

Top Two in Iowa are Best in Border Security

2012-01-07T06:44:00.001-08:00

Timothy Birdnow

Roy Beck of Numbers USA, the anti-illegal invasion group, is pleased with the results of the Iowa Caucuses.
https://www.numbersusa.com/content/nusablog/beckr/january-4-2012/top-4-iowa-contenders-2-strongly-anti-amnesty-handily-beat-2-quasi-amn?

From Beck's blog:

"Immigration wasn't the top issue on the minds of Iowa voters today. But it is worth noting that they chose as their clear winners the two top contenders who have taken the most unequivocal stands against amnesty -- Romney and Santorum.

The other two top contenders were Paul and Gingrich who came in third and fourth and each has backed a limited but sizeable legalization for illegal aliens. Paul has proposed giving many illegal aliens "green cards with an asterisk" while Gingrich has proposed giving them "red cards." In both cases potentially millions of illegal aliens would be allowed to permanently hold U.S. jobs but not to gain citizenship.

On other immigration issues, Santorum and Romney differ. But on amnesty -- or legalization -- of the millions of illegal aliens in this country, both have been unafraid to stand firmly opposed, even when challenged vigorously by journalists, high-paid GOP establishment consultants and national religious leaders to show more compassion for unlawfully present foreign citizens."

End excerpt.

Now, illegal invasion is not a front-page story at the moment, largely because a weak U.S. economy has led to some self-deportation of the freeloaders who broke our laws to come here. But it is still a serious problem, one that can well destroy this nation in years to come. Certainly it is changing the body politic in such a way (do to anchor babies and the like) that America is starting to resemble the banana republics of Latin America. Latin America has been poor and weak not because the lands are poor but because of a cultural poverty that stresses communalism over individual responsibility and a willingness to accept powerful dictators to run governments rather than holding the citizen responsible for maintaining good government. Experiments with socialism in Latin America have also yielded a bounty of dust, making Mexico one of the poorer countries on Earth despite huge oil deposits and natural resources that equal those of the United States. America, with her work ethic, her individualism, her system of liberty, stands head and shoulders over Mexico - or Argentina, which experts had long predicted would emerge as a superpower but which has remained marginal due to the embracing of national socialism under Peron and his successors. All that is coming to America, indeed may already be here; consider the resemblence of Barack Hussein Obama to a Peron, or any other Latin American quasi-socialist strongman.

The border issue is one of my big four voting concerns - along with national security (the ill-named war on terror, and china and Russia) and ridding ourselves of the Gang Green and the whole Global Warming scare, and of course the bankrupting spending spree. I believe each of these poses a clear and present threat to the existence of the United States. I further think that cultural rot here is the cause of all four problems; we no longer care to defend our borders because we no longer believe in America and American exceptionalism, we don't really understand the foreign threats for the same reason and because we have become so much like hothouse plants that we can't grasp that elsewhere in the world are really bad people who mean us ill, environmentalism illustrates those points, and gives us a new religion more pleasing to us than the dour Christianity that kept us from doing what we wished, and all the spending naturally resulted from our selfishly wanting to live off the backs of others, a result of the decline of the work ethic and the individualism that made America what it is. All of these issues tie back to the triumph of Progressivism in America - and the death of our Judeo-Christian roots.

We kicked God out of our public life, out of our schools, out of our industries, our culture. The inevitable result of that is we look to find a substitute, and that substitute is generally government, who can do things for us corporally that are tangible and obvious (God does more, but He does it without showing His hand directly, so we think we are the ones who did it). That's why I always argue that the social issues are the most important; the economic, military, and other issues flow from the morality of the culture. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you" the Bible tells us (all these things being whatever is asked of God). A moral nation is a strong nation,because it holds bedrock beliefs, if nothing else. A nation of moral relativism is a wishy-washy nation, unsure of itself, unwilling to fight to defend itself. Whether one agrees with the concept that God is real is really unnecessary, because human beings still need some sort of a god to worship; it's in human nature. What they will fashion for themselves will never work, because that new God, be he Humanism, Democracy, Socialism, Scientism, Gaia, or any of the myriad other concatenations of pseudo-divinity, are based on human desires executed by human beings for their own benefit. In other words, they are tools to feed the egos and pockets of the ruling classes. How can Science feed the ruling classes? Take a look at Global Warming, see the millions of dollars reaped by Al Gore, and then come back with your question.

When people stop believing in God they stop believing in Natural Law, which means they stop believing in concrete reality, which means they gravitate toward the best deal of the moment, rather than adhering to a permanent standard. This path inevitably leads to doom. Rick Santorum is right to emphasize the moral issues; that is the root of what is wrong with the United States, indeed, with all of Western Civilization right now. We have fashioned our own gods and have no use for the real deal.

And so a myopic view of freedom means we cannot oppose criminals who attack us in public (shoot a guy brandishing a knife and you end up in jail), or who will rob us through taxation, or who invade our country illegally. It means we cannot fight terrorists who kill us, because we don't know for sure who is our friend and who is our enemy, and heaven forbid we offend someone in the process. We cannot secure our borders because we have no right to horde our land and our wealth. Progressivism is truly a doctrine of demons. It is antithetical to the laws of God, yet it sits on the throne as God, and even convinces people that it is the moral path. How many Christians think that government seizing money from individuals to give to those who will not work is somehow the charitable and moral thing? It is still robbery, and done by a power that is irresistable, and at the point of a sword. Charity necessitates choice, and a moral people give willingly. That is why America's private charity far outstrips the rest of the world; America has a smaller welfare state than most. And it's why conservative giving far outstrips liberal; they see that as a function of government, while we see it as a duty we owe to God. Yet the media portrays conservatives as somehow cold and loveless for not empowering the State to steal people's money at gunpoint.

To get back to the Iowa results, it's also interesting to note that the best two candidates on illegal invasion are also the two most religious. Now, both of them are infected with the Progressive disease, and I have grave reservations on both, but it's interesting to note that both at least see the value of maintaining the integrity of the American borders. I'm not thrilled with either of them, but they are better than many of the alternatives.

Obama's Brazilian; Waxing away American Jobs

2012-01-07T05:54:00.000-08:00

Dana Mathewson forwards this:

"Any president whose actions so consistently refute his own words must have deep contempt for the intelligence of the American public."

The Obama administration told U.S. owned Hawker Beechcraft earlier this week they are being excluded from bidding on the US Air Force contract for a light attack aircraft. That leaves Brazilian owned Embraer as the likely recipient of the lucrative deal. I found this one hard to believe so I did a little research. It was tough because this was completely ignored by the main stream media. The information is out there on several conservative sites. Please see the two articles linked below.
This is a double slap in the face of the United States. At a time when jobs, the economy, and security are the most critical priorities for our country, the Obama administration decides to send a defense contract to a foreign owned company.

This has to be the stupidest thing this administration has done to date. This is not just a dumb decision, it is a perfect example of why this president is such a poor leader. He talks about wanting jobs. He says we need to force companies to repatriate billions of dollars that Americans keep overseas. He wants to raise taxes so he can spend billions on stimulus that does nothing to stimulate anything.
And when its time to act, he sends our tax dollars overseas at the expense of American jobs and income for an American company. This is nothing more than a Chicago-style political pay back; but this time it is at the expense of our national security.

How much more damage will Obama be allowed to do in the next 14 months? One of the lead stories in the media this week blasted congress for insider trading. If this contract goes to Embraer it will be a huge pay off to another George Soros company.
When will the 4th estate do its constitutionally protected job and expose the real Obama to the American people?

Article from REDSTATE Posted by Ben Howe Monday, November 21st at 6:00AM EST:
Obama Administration Sends Weapons Contract to Foreign Company with Ties to Iran
http://www.redstate.com/aglanon/2011/11/21/obama-administration-sends-weapons-contract-to-foreign-company-with-ties-to-iran/

Article from WORLDPRESS By Gary P Jackson| NOVEMBER 22, 2011 · 4:17 PM
Hawker-Beechcraft Denied Big Air Force Contract in Favor of Brazilian Company With Soros Connections
http://thespeechatimeforchoosing.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/hawker-beechcraft-denied-big-air-force-contract-in-favor-of-brazilian-company-with-soros-connections/

Article from A Time For Choosing · Just another WordPress.com
http://www.kansas.com/2011/11/23/2112778/hawker-requests-gao-review-of.html
We can no longer depend on the media to pass on any news that might be construed as negative towards the democrats.